As things now stand, at least one seat on a local city council will remain empty after the Nov. 6 general election. Only two candidates are vying for the three seats on the Culver City Council.

Shannon Orr and Hilario Diaz are unopposed for reelection to the seats they now hold, and there’s a contest for the mayor’s job. In Position 1, meanwhile, Charles Rushing did not file for reelection, nor did anyone else file the paperwork to run for his seat.

That means that without a successful write-in campaign, the mayor and remaining council members would decide who should become the sixth city councilor in Culver.

That might seem like a good way to go. If councilors fill a vacancy by deciding among themselves who should get the job, chances are they’ll select someone a majority thinks it can get along with. It makes for peaceful council meetings, to be sure, but it also poses a potential problem.

Councilors chosen in an election may or may not agree with others elected to lead the city of Culver, or any other governmental body, for that matter. That’s not always a bad thing, however. Dissenters can be the men and women who point out some unintended consequence of an action that might otherwise have been missed. Their presence also can prod other councilors and a mayor into publicly justifying their positions on the issues that are important in their community, and that, in turn may mean they’ll think about proposed changes — or proposed inaction — in ways they otherwise might not.

Culver residents will be best served if someone in the community decides soon to wage a write-in campaign for Position 1 and then gets busy doing so. Giving voters an option, even if it means they must go to the trouble of writing in a name to fill the council vacancy, is a worthy undertaking.