The ACC Commission passed a resolution calling on the Georgia legislature to allow cities and municipalities across the state to adopt a new voting system for local elections.
Ranked choice voting is a system that allows voters to select candidates in order of preference, rather than choosing only one to support. It’s often favored by third parties because it allows voters to choose a lesser-known presidential candidate, for example, without doing so at the expense of one of the major candidates.
Ranked choice voting also allows local governments to avoid costly runoff elections, which is the reason the commission is asking the state government to allow it. Currently, ranked choice voting is prohibited by state law.
“Since 2020, just in the last handful of years, we’ve spent $537,235 on runoff elections,” Commissioner Jesse Houle said. “I think there are better ways to spend a little over half a million dollars.”
Beyond the expense, runoff elections often have another problem, which is low turnout. The last local runoff election between Mary Bagby and ACC Board of Education member Claudia Butts earlier this year had only 161 votes cast in total. Only 2.1% of registered voters participated.
“When there are runoffs, the numbers drop so, so, so low,” Commissioner Carol Myers lamented. “[Ranked choice voting] would allow a way to have more people actually in the decision-making process.”
Ranked choice voting is sometimes called “instant runoff” voting, because runoffs can be held immediately with the selections voters have already made. If no candidate receives over 50% of the vote, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. The second round of voting then happens automatically; voters who preferred the eliminated candidate have their second place votes tallied instead. Their support may allow a candidate to break the 50% threshold and win the election. If not, the process continues until someone wins.
The resolution in support of ranked choice voting passed in a split 6-5 vote, with Mayor Kelly Girtz breaking the tie in favor. Commissioners Tiffany Taylor, Allison Wright, Dexter Fisher, John Culpepper and Mike Hamby voted no.
At a meeting earlier this month, Commissioner Mike Hamby explained that he thought the state government would not listen to Athens, so there was no a reason to try. This week, most of the naysayers stayed quiet and did not explain their reasoning. Of the five of them, only Fisher gave any comments.
“We have not polled or surveyed the public, locally, about how they feel about [ranked choice voting],” Fisher said. “Secondly, we don’t know the start-up cost to do that. As much problems as we have had with voting in the past, it might confuse our public locally…I think we really need to take a look and do some more study. The Board of Elections has not had an opportunity to even take a look at this.”
Fisher did not explain why he thought that polling the public or asking the Board of Elections to review something that is currently prohibited by state law would be a good use of their time. If allowed by the state legislature, ranked choice voting would need to be approved by the mayor and commission in a future vote before it would be implemented. That would give the Board of Elections time to review and consider the potential downsides of ranked choice voting at a later date.
“This [resolution] is an opportunity for us to do that next level of exploration,” Girtz said after breaking the commission tie in favor of the resolution. “The process of runoff elections both diminish democracy and cost a lot of money, so anything we can do that enhances democracy and costs less money, I think is a good thing.”
Myers hoped that this resolution from Athens would be part of a “critical mass” of cities speaking out for ranked choice voting across Georgia that would encourage the state legislature to act to improve our electoral system.
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