On April 5, the Yakima, Washington, city council voted to drop the city’s appeal in a case over how city councilmembers are elected. A U.S. District Court had invalidated the city’s at-large elections for city council and ordered district elections, based on the federal Voting Rights Act.
See this story. This was an ACLU case. The city had been hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court might issue an opinion in the Texas Evanwel case that would help it, but instead, on April 4, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of traditional districting principles.
In the election last year, the relative number of votes cast in the 7 districts was:
1.94
1.49
1.18
0.98
0.74
0.37
0.30
That is, some voters had over 6 times as much influence over the composition of the city council as did others. 49% of the total votes were cast in two of the seven districts. A losing candidate received more votes than did all candidates in two districts.