FERGUSON, Missouri (Reuters) - After months of race-fueled street protests, residents of Ferguson, Missouri, will have a chance next month to press their demands in a different way: at the ballot box.

Eight candidates including four African Americans are vying for three available seats on Ferguson’s city council, promising change on a body that will be expected to introduce broad local reforms in a city shaken by the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer last August.

Patricia Bynes, a committeewoman for Ferguson Township who is running a voter education program ahead of the April 7 election, said the vote is an important opportunity for the city’s residents to take their demands to a new forum.

“Some people try to make the discussion about whether protests are more effective than voting, but I know that it takes both,” she said. “What some people don’t recognize is that protesting alone will not get the people you want into office.”

Ferguson has been in turmoil since the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown seven months ago set off street protests that escalated in November when the officer was cleared of wrongdoing. The Ferguson case sparked demonstrations around the country over unfair police treatment of minorities.

Tensions flared again this month with the release of a U.S. Justice Department report detailing what it called systemic racial bias in the police force, and a court system that disproportionately levied steep fines on Ferguson’s black residents. Ferguson’s police chief, Thomas Jackson, resigned after the report’s release, and calls are growing among activists for Mayor James Knowles to go as well.

The election promises more changes.

Some two-thirds of Ferguson’s 21,000 residents are black, but the city has only ever had two black council members, both of whom were initially nominated to their positions. The current six-member council has one black member, Dwayne James, whose seat is not up for grabs. The election could triple that representation.

In Ferguson’s Ward 3 voting district, which includes Brown’s neighborhood and the sites of some of the worst clashes between protesters and police last year, two black candidates are vying for the same seat: municipal judge Wesley Bell and retiree Lee Smith.

VOTER APATHY

But some residents of the area were nonplussed by the prospect of a black representative.

“Just because they’re black doesn’t mean they are good,” said Carmie Hubbard, 40, who grew up with Brown. “There are a lot of prejudiced people, and dangerous people, on both sides. It boils down to morality.”

Hubbard said that, while she is registered to vote, she does not expect to cast a ballot next month.

“It just feels useless to vote.”

Ernest Eugene Bell, a 30 year-old record producer from the neighborhood, said he feels more optimistic.

“Without participating in elections, you’ll never get the change you want.” He added that he feels the protests have stopped being useful, particularly after last Thursday when two police officers were shot at the end of a protest rally.

Two black and two white candidates are vying for a seat in Ferguson’s Ward 1, while two white candidates - including former Mayor Brian Fletcher - are vying for the seat in the upscale Ward 2 voting area.

For activist Bynes, it is important to engage residents in the election. She said that she was using volunteer college students, free on spring break, as part of a program to educate voters.

“Like everywhere, municipal elections tend to draw a very small number of voters. It would be great to change that here and now,” she said. “We have never had a voter registration problem. The issue is turnout.”

Active registered voters in Ferguson rose by 4.6 percent to 12,698 voters in the past 9 months, in line with the rest of St. Louis County, said Eric Fey of the St. Louis County Election Board. Voter turnout in Ferguson for local elections, meanwhile, has tended to run between 10 and 40 percent, according to county records, spiking to 75 percent for presidential elections.