Boulder voters in November will get to decide whether they want to directly elect their mayor through ranked-choice voting, though questions about how that will work — and who will conduct the election — remain unanswered.
The Our Mayor, Our Choice campaign was among several ballot initiatives ensnared by the city’s incorrect election guidance this summer and did not meet the signature requirements and deadline that City Council members ultimately decided were correct.
But campaign leaders worked with City Council on a revised initiative, keeping key aspects of direct election and ranked choice voting, which was referred to the ballot by City Council on a 5-4 vote earlier this month.
Boulder’s mayor is currently elected by City Council members, not by voters.
Ranked choice voting asks voters to rank candidates by preference. If no candidate has 50% of the vote, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated and the people who voted for that candidate have their votes redistributed to their No. 2 choice.
The ballot measure calls for ranked-choice voting and direct election of the mayor to begin in 2023, but Boulder County Clerk Molly Fitzpatrick told City Council members and the Daily Camera she cannot guarantee her office will be able to conduct a ranked-choice election by that time.
There are statutory and technical hurdles to incorporating ranked-choice voting into the current system, Fitzpatrick said, and those must be addressed by the state legislature and Secretary of State’s office before counties can act.
Some underlying regulatory framework for ranked-choice voting systems is not as well established, Fitzpatrick said, and the county would need to develop and/or test new systems to account for the candidate elimination process, tie-breaking procedures and ballot layout.
Developing new voting systems requires coordination between counties, the Secretary of State’s office, voting system and software experts, Fitzpatrick said.
“We want to be the best possible partner that we can to everyone we coordinate with in Boulder County, it’s just with a voting system change, we need to proceed with a great deal of intention,” she said. “Voters in Colorado have a high degree of confidence and we want to always be building on that and not be implementing anything that takes away from that.”
Fitzpatrick said she wants to be engaged in the conversation about ranked-choice voting in Boulder County. The domino effect to set ranked-choice voting into motion would be the legislature directing the Secretary of State’s office to develop the technological capabilities to conduct ranked-choice voting elections.
Another option would be for the city to conduct its own election, separate from the county clerk’s office, by purchasing existing ranked-choice voting software — but city leaders don’t have a clear idea of how much that would cost.
Campaign organizers worked with Council members on an amendment that would allow ranked-choice voting to be delayed by two years if the clerk’s office did not feel ready to conduct the election, but that amendment failed to get the six City Council votes necessary to be added to the measure. The amendment’s failure flummoxed campaign chair Matt Benjamin because it would have alleviated the concerns of some Council members.
The unknowns sealed a no vote from Council member Mark Wallach, who voted against referring the measure to the ballot along with Council members Mirabai Nagle, Mary Young and Sam Weaver.
“This may be a great idea, but this is an undercooked charter amendment,” Wallach said. “We don’t know how we’re going to effectuate it, don’t know when we’ll be able to effectuate it, the county said they have no idea how they’ll be able to do it and we have had very little community discussion about what form of ranked choice voting we want to implement.”
Wallach said he’s not opposed to ranked-choice voting, but the idea of adding something to the city charter and figuring out how to make it work after is poor governance.
The politicking involved in referring the Our Mayor, Our Choice measure to the ballot is exactly why voters need more say in their elections, Benjamin said.
“It’s almost fate with a twist of irony that we are proposing a more democratic structure, where more of Boulder gets a say and reduces polarization, and we’re literally seeing the intrinsic, inherent political dysfunction at play while they debate this ballot measure,” Benjamin said. “In many ways it validates why we’re doing this.”
Benjamin said he does not see the uncertainty surrounding ranked-choice voting at the state and local level as a detractor. Instead, the pressure from Boulder voters pursuing ranked-choice voting could force state officials to act sooner than they would have otherwise, he said.
“You might not like that we said 2023, but that’s how you get stuff done. At the end of the day the deadline is to hold our feet to the fire. If we said we’re going to do mayor and ranked-choice voting whenever we get to it, it would never get done,” Benjamin said.
And if push comes to shove and Boulder County cannot manage the election in 2023, Benjamin said there’s always the option of returning to voters to ask for more time to implement ranked-choice voting.
“We’re all fighting exactly the same fight right now, going in the same direction, but getting caught in unnecessary politics and semantics,” Benjamin said. “Boulder is known for doing bold things, and there is uncertainty in all of the bold things that we do, but it doesn’t stop us from seeing the prize, seeing the end result and pushing through to get it done.”
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