Termite Inspection

When you’re scanning the sky for incoming artillery, you don’t always notice the termites chewing away at the beams in your basement.

That’s another way of saying, when you’re obsessed with the latest episodes of King Don Un’s reality show up in D.C., you sometimes forget to pay attention to what’s happening in your old home town. Specifically, what’s going on with the Memphis City Council and with certain members who are running for other offices to be decided in the upcoming August 2nd election.

I’m generally in favor of term limits, as are most local voters, judging from the fact that they’ve voted in two-term limits for most county offices and for the Shelby County Commission and, in 2008, voted by a three-to-one margin to limit the Memphis City Council to two terms. In that same election, Memphians voted by a similar margin to institute Instant Runoff Voting, which allows voters to rank their choices and by so doing, eliminate expensive runoff elections.

Read the rest of the article here.

Please follow and like us:

Our View: Historic ranked-choice vote worked as promised

With Maine’s historic statewide first-in-the-nation ranked-choice election behind us, we have witnessed a massive change – at least among the way opponents talk about it.

The same people who were warning of “chaos” and bizarre results are now complaining that nothing happened.

In every race on June 12, the candidate with the most votes in the first round was the ultimate winner, even in the races where instant runoffs were needed to give the leader more than 50 percent of the vote. No one even changed position as the new rounds of votes were counted.

Read the remainder of the article here.

Please follow and like us:

Activist Group Wants to See Text of “Mystery Memo”

Final voting for the county general election ballot is still four weeks away, on Thursday, August 2nd, but a serious battle is raging about the possible aftermath, as it affects three Memphis City Council seats.

Those are the seats now held by councilmembers Edmund Ford, Bill Morrison, and Janis Fullilove, candidates for Position 9 on the County Commission, Probate Court Clerk, and Juvenile Court Clerk, respectively. If any or all of the three win should win, the question then becomes one of how long the winning members will hold on to their council seats before resigning them.

Read the remainder of the article here.

Please follow and like us:

Vote for Me! For Second Place, at Least?

What if we’ve been electing our politicians the wrong way this whole time?

Voters in Maine will tackle that question on Tuesday, when the state holds its primaries using a radical yet sensible electoral reform that could fundamentally change how campaigns are run and who ends up winning. It will be the first time the method — known as ranked-choice, or instant-runoff, voting — is used in a statewide election.

Read the remainder of the article here.

Please follow and like us:

Opinion | As Maine goes, so goes Memphis?

Last week, voters in Maine approved — for the second time in three years — a new system of voting called ranked-choice or instant runoffs.

Maine will be using instant runoffs voting (IRV) for statewide elections, including those for governor and Congress.

They tried it out last week, using IRV in their Democratic and Republican primaries. The election went off without a hitch, with none of the problems — voter confusion, voiding of ballots, vote-counting problems, etc. — predicted by IRV opponents.

It’s a lesson for Memphis.

Read the remainder of the article here.

Please follow and like us:

Memphis City Council Hijinks?

The Memphis City Council is under attack from various disenchanted citizens regarding several alleged pro-incumbent referenda it voted onto the November ballot — one that would counter the council’s current two-term limit for members, another that would negate the Shelby County Election Commission’s plans for ranked choice voting (RCV) in the 2019 city election, and another that would abolish all runoff elections. Now new scrutiny is arising on the question of how and when three council members might be replaced should they win other elected positions they are seeking in the August county general election.

Read the remainder of the article here.

Please follow and like us:

City Council Controversy

We have some controversy over the future of Memphis City Council. Three council members are running for county positions in this upcoming election. However, a law states that the members have 90 days to resign from their positions due to this election. If they resign, then the election commission could hold a special election to replace those seats. If they don’t resign then it would be up to City Council to replace those three seats. Save IRV Memphis members Theryn Bond and John Marek said it should be the citizens who decide who fills those seats.

Please follow and like us:

On The Ballot: Instant Runoff Voting

Seven out of 10 Memphis voters have already said they want instant run-off voting in local elections, and the Shelby County Election Commission is scheduled to put that into place next year. However, a City Council vote from December will once again put it on the ballot this November. Save IRV Memphis is waging a campaign to explain how it works. Pastor Earle Fisher and Carlos Ochoa with Save IRV Memphis joined us to explain.

Please follow and like us:

Save IRV Campaign Aims To Allow For Instant Runoff…

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (localmemphis.com) – A group of supporters launched a campaign Tuesday with the goal to save instant runoff voting (IRV).

With instant runoff voting, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins a majority of first place votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. The ballots are then redistributed according to the voter’s choices.

Read the remainder of the article here.

Please follow and like us: