Excerpt:  A fledgling petition drive will seek to elect Detroit City Council members by district, instead of its 90-year-old at-large system in which voters choose all nine in a citywide vote.  Supporters of district elections, as opposed to at-large, believe politicians chosen from specific geographic areas will be more responsive and accountable to their constituents.

Most current council members live in and around several key neighborhoods, including Palmer Woods, Rosedale Park, Sherwood Forest and downtown Detroit. Lemmons noted that huge swaths of the city, such as southwest Detroit with its vibrant Mexican population and older, struggling neighborhoods, such as Warrendale, don’t have council members living close by.

Switching back to a district election system, which ended in 1918, has come up every few years in Detroit, but gone nowhere. A referendum was to go before voters in 2002, but City Council members sued to block it because it originated from the state Legislature and not Detroit citizens.

Read entire article here: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080416/METRO/804160355/1409/METRO