Seattle council weighs proposal to no longer have 7 seats up for reelection in a single year

SEATTLE — A Seattle City Council committee will soon weigh a proposal to stagger the council’s elections to make it so that fewer seats are up for election in any one year.

Under the city’s current cadence, seven of nine council seats are up for reelection every four years, including in 2023. The other two at-large seats are up for grabs two years prior, aligning with mayoral and city attorney elections (most recently in 2021).

The proposal set to be considered in the council’s finance committee would look to mitigate “the possibility of significant turnover” every four years, by putting four seats up for election in one year, and then five seats in another. If passed, it would put a charter amendment on the November 2024 ballot. From there, voters would decide on a series of changes to make this new cadence possible:

• Districts 2, 4, 6, and at-large seat 9 would have their terms reduced to two years for one term only, starting in 2026 for seat 9, and 2028 for the other three seats. After that, all seats would revert back to their normal four-year term.
• That would put all even council seats on the ballot in 2029 and 2033, and all odd-numbered seats in 2027, 2031, and 2035.

You can see the full list of proposed changes to terms here:

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