Eight run for two seats on Petersburg assembly kfsk.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from kfsk.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It Is Time for Dallas to Adopt Ranked-Choice Voting
As six council campaigns head to runoffs, let s finally admit that Dallas municipal elections have morphed into glorified primaries.
By Peter Simek
Published in
FrontBurner
May 6, 2021
9:10 am
Amid all the postgame analysisthat has been flyingabout in the aftermath of last Saturday’s municipal elections, one simple and striking fact bears mentioning: up until a few election cycles ago, sitting council members were rarely challenged. That has changed – big time. Last Saturday’s elections saw competitive races in nearly every district, and three incumbents David Blewett, Adam Bazaldua, and Carolyn King Arnold have been forced into runoffs. In general, that’s a good thing. More candidates mean more ideas are brought to the table, more citizens are engaged in the electoral process, and council members are more responsive to the constituents who put them in office.
Austinites for Progressive Reform s
strong mayor proposal (Proposition F) was failing spectacularly.
Bo Delp, organizer with
By the People ATX, called it a repudiation of Prop F s provision that a future strong mayor could veto decisions made by City Council, the main message his team had been using to urge Austinites to reject the proposal. Others, such as labor leader
Jeremy Hendricks, pointed to a lack of authentic community engagement from APR as it crafted its proposals last fall: The last thing we want is millionaires and tech CEOs telling us what they think is good for us.
By the time votes were cast on election day, APR was being out-hustled by two different campaigns against Prop F: By the People ATX, largely backed by labor groups (including those representing city employees), and
Austin, TX voters overwhelmingly reject propositions pushed by progressives americanthinker.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from americanthinker.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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.