Council Districts and Wards

Council districts and wards are two different ways of dividing Philadelphia, and residents often confuse them. Council districts determine which member of City Council represents a neighborhood; wards and their divisions determine where residents vote and how political parties are organized. A single Council district generally contains parts of several wards, and one ward can be split between districts.^[1]

1 Council districts

The Home Rule Charter provides for a 17-member Council: ten members elected from districts and seven elected at large citywide. District members serve four-year terms with no term limits. Informally, the member for a district also holds strong influence over land-use decisions there, a custom known as Councilmanic Prerogative. The ten numbered districts together cover the whole city, from South and Southwest Philadelphia to the Northeast. A resident can look up the district member at the City's website or via How to Find Your Elected Officials.

2 Wards and divisions

The city has 66 numbered wards. Each ward is split into divisions, the polling-place units in which votes are cast and counted, with numbers running from about 1 to more than 50 in the largest wards. Divisions typically contain a few hundred to a thousand voters. Under the Pennsylvania Election Code, the county board of elections, which in Philadelphia is the City Commissioners, administers the polling places and the division maps. Party organization follows wards: each ward elects a leader and committeepeople; see Ward Leaders and Committeepersons.

3 Redistricting

Under the Charter, Council redraws the district lines after each decennial census to equalize population. The process takes place by ordinance, and in recent cycles it has involved public hearings, a Council redistricting committee and objections from community groups concerned about splitting neighborhoods. Federal Voting Rights Act requirements also constrain the lines. Ward boundaries change less often than district lines; sometimes a ward is split between two districts, creating confusion about who represents a given block.^[2]

The numbers help show the scale of the two systems. Philadelphia has 66 wards, and the two committee seats in each division add up to 3,406 Democratic ward committee seats, which implies roughly 1,703 divisions citywide (see Ward Leaders and Committeepersons). By contrast, only ten district seats exist on City Council, plus seven at-large seats elected by the whole city. Under the Charter, no voter may vote for more than five at-large candidates, so a single party cannot win more than five of the seven at-large seats. District boundaries therefore matter most for the ten district races, while the at-large races are decided citywide regardless of ward or district.

Because the lines are drawn by ordinance only once a decade, a neighborhood can remain in the same Council district for many years even as its population changes. Residents who want to know who represents them, where to vote, and which ward leader to contact should look up their address on the City Commissioners' voter lookup rather than infer one answer from another.

4 Why the difference matters

• Services and zoning: you contact your district councilmember, not your ward leader, about a land-use or service problem.
• Voting: your ward and division determine your polling place; your district determines which Council race is on your ballot.
• Party politics: your ward leader chairs a party committee and influences endorsements but holds no government power.
• Boundaries: because wards and districts do not align, ward-based vote totals do not map directly onto Council results.

Residents can find their ward, division, polling place and district on the City Commissioners' voter lookup at vote.phila.gov.

See also: Elections in Philadelphia, Registered Community Organizations, Philadelphia Home Rule Charter.

References

1. City of Philadelphia, Home Rule Charter, Article II (Council); City Council district maps (phila.gov, phlcouncil.com).
2. Philadelphia City Commissioners, ward and division information (vote.phila.gov); Seventy, "City Wards and Divisions" (seventy.org).