From Wards to Winner-Take-All in Charlottesville

Charlottesville's winner-take-all election system wasn't inevitable — it was engineered. When the city incorporated in 1888, it was initially divided into four separate wards. The ward system allowed residents in each neighborhood to elect their representatives, giving working-class and newly-enfranchised Black men a stronger voice in local government. The boundaries shifted as the city grew, and for more than 30 years, wards ensured that each section of the city won its fair share of seats.

But in the 1920s, city leaders grew tired of sharing power across the wards and decided to consolidate control. In 1923, at the height of Jim Crow, Charlottesville dissolved its wards and adopted at-large block voting, a shift mirrored in cities across the country. 

While reformers of the day argued publicly that block voting would eliminate "special interest candidates" and defuse battles over drawing district lines, a 1979 report from the University of Virginia Institute of Government acknowledged the movement's more pernicious motives:

"[I]n the early 1900s, upper-class, business-led reformers regarded at-large elections as a device to reduce the influence of working class and ethnic neighborhoods that found expression through ward based elections."

A more recent analysis by Protect Democracy and Unite America confirmed that Charlottesville's shift to at-large election was part of a broader national movement. In the 1920s, cities across the country adopted block voting with the “intent to suppress minority representation”. Proponents promoted their plans with high-minded language, arguing that at-large elections "would attract a 'better class' of council members" who prioritized citywide interests over neighborhood concerns. 

Their real goals were less noble. In practice, block voting was "de facto aiming at reducing the influence of immigrants and (the very few) black voters", and the impact was profound. By the 1970s, "blacks living in cities with at-large elections [had] half the chance of electing a member as blacks in cities using wards." The block vote was working as intended — concentrating political power among white and affluent voters while excluding working-class and minority residents from local leadership.

But in 1965, the federal Voting Rights Act gave minority communities new legal tools to challenge winner-take-all elections. Learn about the NAACP's campaign to restore wards in Virginia in Part 3 of this series.