Laura Haber addresses the media at the press conference

"The addition of at-large seats to local government would push Urbana in the wrong direction. Across the U.S., cities have been removing at-large seats from their city councils, not adding them," said Ben Grosser in his statement, one of the lead organizers of the group. "In recent years, over 250 cities eliminated at-large seats from their councils, making this one of the most commonly proposed and approved changes to local government nationwide."

Vote No At-Large plans to campaign heavily between now and the November election. Forums, door-to-door campaigning, and voter education are all planned to ask residents to vote "no" this November on the ballot question.

The citizens of Urbana voted to change the Urbana School Board from at-large to districts in 1998. Laura Haber, a former School Board member spoke at the press conference: "Anyone who is elected under an at-large system will be impelled to run larger, less responsive campaigns than their ward counterparts. If we want to maintain a system in which people have to talk to their neighbors in order to win, in which everyone—no matter how wealthy or well-connected—has an equal chance at representation, and in which an election cannot be bought by high gloss, content-free advertising, we must think small."

Phyllis Clark, City Clerk for Urbana, spoke about the ways in which at-large dilutes the minority vote: "A common method used to negate the minority vote, both before and after the Voting Rights Act, was to use at-large representation for local government. At-large seats have been extremely effective in diluting the minority vote because they require citywide campaigning as opposed to district-wide. Minority neighborhood districts are more likely to elect minority candidates. But at-large seats, with voters taken from anywhere in the city, typically elect majority candidates."

Mort Brussel, a southeast Urbana resident spoke about the concept of 'one person, one vote': "Do I, as a resident of southeast Urbana, deserve a greater voice in government than a person who lives on Bradley Avenue? Of course not. But the central argument in support of at-large elections is that people who live in wards with higher voter turnout deserve a greater voice in government. ... Not according to the U.S. Constitution. The constitutional principle of one person, one vote is that representation in government must be based on population, not on voter turnout.

Each speaker concluded their remarks by urging their fellow neighbors to vote "no" on the ballot question.

Further information about the Vote No At-Large campaign, including the full prepared statements from the press conference, a discussion of the issues, information on how to get involved, and a detailed review of the scientific literature on this topic is available on the organizations webiste, at www.noatlarge.org.