Instant Runoff Advocate Reacts to Council Vote for Anti-Runoff…

The following is an exchange between Allan Wade, counsel for the Memphis City Council, and Steve Mulroy, a University of Memphis law professor, former Shelby County Commissioner, and leading advocate of instant runoff voting for local elections. The exchange relates to an ordinance — passed 11-2 by the Council on Tuesday — establishing a referendum that could eliminate all runoff voting in city elections. Mulroy’s reference to being “out of the country” refers to a sabbatical law fellowship of his, now ongoing in Canberra, Australia.

Read the rest of the article here.

EDITORIAL: Take Current Council Members Out of Three-Term-Limit Question

For all of the names currently circulating for this or that office on one of the three election days we’ll have in Shelby County this year, it might help somewhere near the outset to remember who and what this is about.

This year will probably have a few ballot questions of a local nature for us to consider.

Memphis voters will decide whether to do away with ranked-choice (aka instant runoff) voting before it can ever be used in Memphis City Council races in 2019.

Read the rest of The Daily News Editorial here.

Memphis City Council Duplicity

Are they kidding? There can be several legitimate arguments adduced for and against the process of voting known as both Instant Runoff Voting and Ranked Choice Voting, but the Memphis City Council’s current campaign against the process has gone way out of bounds.

Read the rest of the Memphis Flyer Editorial here.

Editorial: One person, one vote, one big mess

Maybe every election should have a do-over. That seems to be the prevailing position of the Memphis City Council.

In 2008, 155,000 Memphians voted to approve instant runoff voting, a new method of electing city council members that does away with traditional second-election runoffs.

Read the remainder of this Commercial Appeal Editorial here.

Election Commission to sue Memphis, Tennessee over instant runoffs

The Shelby County Election Commission voted Tuesday to sue Memphis and Tennessee to settle the question of whether instant runoff elections are legal.

The commission voted unanimously to ask the Davidson County Chancery Court to make a declaratory judgment on whether it should follow the city charter and implement instant City Council runoffs as planned in 2019, or follow the direction of state elections coordinator Mark Goins, who in September opined that instant runoffs are illegal — although instant-runoff supporters say his arguments are based on misunderstandings.

Read the rest of the article here!

Instant runoff voting will get another vote in Memphis

The fight is not over!

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Memphis will ask voters — again — for their opinion on whether instant runoff should be used in city elections.

Voters approved the process, also known as ranked choice voting, by a wide margin in a referendum a decade ago but it was never put in place because the Shelby County Election Commission said voting machines weren’t set up for it.

Read the remainder of the article here.

Council Wants Second Shot at Holding City Back

The Memphis City Council thinks the City’s voters are just so dumb.

Ten years ago, the fine people of Memphis voted to end runoff elections using a neat little system called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). IRV does away with costly (around $250,000) and poorly attended runoff elections (6% of registered voters in 2015) by letting voters rank their choices. If no one gets a straight majority, the vote counters take the second choice of the folks who voted for the candidate with the fewest votes. This continues until someone gets a majority of the vote. Simple enough right?

Apparently not.

Read the rest of the article here.

[The Memphis City Council is] Undermining the Public Will

 There is the proposal by Councilman Ed Ford and others that would revoke the public’s right, already expressed via referendum, to a fair trial of instant runoff voting (IRV) in the next city election, and there is an effort by Councilman Berlin Boyd on behalf of replacing a two-term limit for council members that was only recently approved by the voters.

Find out about how the Memphis City Council threw away your vote from 2008 here.

Watch This Video to See Responses to Concerns about…

Why is IRV better than the current voting process?