Austin made history over the weekend as it became the first city in Texas to adopt the use of ranked choice voting during a special election on May 1. Nearly 60% of city voters approved its use in future city elections.
Proposition E in Austin allows city voters to rank candidates in order of preference (i.e. Choice 1, Choice 2, Choice 3, etc.) up to 5 candidates in city council and mayoral elections. If no candidate gets 50% of first choice elections, the last place candidate is eliminated and their voters’ second choices are applied to the results.
This process continues until a candidate has over 50% support. It is a way to conduct an instant runoff without charging taxpayers the expense of another election that would have a significant drop in turnout.
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With every election cycle, the
Chronicle News team and editorial board take seriously the trust our readers have given us to navigate the issues and make our recommendations. This year, we ve added opportunities for you to see and hear firsthand from the people behind the propositions on the May 1 special election ballot.
Austinites for Progressive Reform Founder Andrew Allison and APR campaign manager Jim Wick joined News Editor Mike Clark-Madison to discuss the group s proposals to change the timing of mayoral elections, expand the size of City Council, replace run-offs with ranked choice voting, and create public financing of Council campaigns with a Democracy Dollars program.
Cleo Petricek and
Homes Not Handcuffs
You can also listen to forums on
KOOP-FM, which will be broadcasting them on Tuesday, April 13. We ll have our
endorsements and more election coverage in the April 16 issue;
early voting begins April 19.
What’s on the Ballot?
Seven of the eight propositions (all except Prop B) would amend the Austin
City Charter, which can only be amended by election every two years – a state law provision that, by a matter of days, made the APR amendments (Props D-H) ineligible for the November 2020 ballot. Save Austin Now had submitted Prop B for the November 2020 ballot but fell short of the required number of signatures from Austin voters; it succeeded on its second try. Find info on
Earlier this week, the political action committee pushing a plan that would let voters decide if Austin s top decision-maker should be the mayor or continue to be the city manager cleared an important hurdle.
Austinites for Progressive Reform – a PAC made up of political insiders and entrepreneurs fighting to give the mayor supreme authority – gathered more than 24,000 signatures. Those signatures were submitted Jan. 11, and on Tuesday the city clerk issued a certificate of approval indicating at least 20,000 of them were from registered voters – the minimum total the city requires for charter amendments to be placed on a ballot.
If voters approve the change, City Manager Spencer Cronk will lose not only his power, but also his job. It s a cold reality he addressed publicly for the first time this week in a conversation with the American-Statesman.