Bellingham will use ranked-choice voting for City Council vacancies. How does it work?
Bellingham will use a “ranked-choice” system when filling future vacancies following member resignations on the City Council.
Council members unanimously approved the procedural step Monday, Feb. 7, after a presentation by FairVote Washington, a nonpartisan group that advocates for election reforms.
Ranked-choice voting is becoming more popular because it can eliminate the need for a primary and save time and money spent on elections, said Lisa Ayrault, executive director of FairVote Washington.
“In the vast majority of ranked-choice votes there is a majority winner who emerges quickly,” Ayrault told the council’s Committee of the Whole.
It also encourages voter turnout, she said.
But even more importantly, ranked-choice voting allows a broader range of ideas, creates issue-driven campaigns and reduces negativity, said City Attorney Alan Marriner.
“You’re always trying to get people to rank you at least somewhere,” Marriner said. “If you really alienate a major part of the voters through negative campaigning, chances are you’re not going to be their second, third or fourth choice.”
How it works
In a ranked-choice system, voters list all candidates for a single office in order of preference, from first to last — with a limit of five candidates.
If no candidate receives a majority of 50% plus one vote, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated, and votes for are transferred to candidates who are those voters’ second, third and fourth choices until there’s a winner.
To show how it works, FairVote Washington volunteer Kit Muehlman used an example that showed preferences for certain kinds of pie:
▪ On the first vote, apple pie got 37 votes, pumpkin pie got 36 votes, pecan pie got 31 votes and lemon meringue got 20 votes.
▪ On the second vote, lemon meringue was eliminated and the votes of people who favored that kind of pie were transferred to the pies representing their second and third choices — leaving apple pie with 48 votes, pumpkin pie with 41 and pecan pie with 35.
▪ On the third vote, pecan pie is eliminated and apple pie defeats pumpkin pie, 66-58.
Councilman Michael Lilliquist compared it to an on-the-spot primary.
“When you have more than two candidates, you’re probably going to get someone who doesn’t get 50% then you will always need to do a runoff or have a primary, which is a pre-planned runoff,” Lilliquist said.
“All this does is acknowledge that (a primary election) is going to come anyway, and allow you to take care of it ahead of time so that the runoff is instant,” he said.
Where it’s used
Bills under consideration in both the state House and Senate would provide a local option for ranked-choice voting, as Bellingham and several other Washington cities have sought.
San Juan and Clark counties will vote on a ballot measure this year that allows ranked-choice elections.
Olympia City Council members recently used a ranked-choice system to choose its mayor.
Alaska and Maine will be using it for state and federal elections this year.
To be effective, and to guarantee transparency and trust in the electoral process, voters must understand how the ranked-choice system works, Whatcom County Auditor Diana Bradrick said at the meeting.
“If you use a voting style where voters don’t understand how you got to the end result, there’s a concern,” Bradrick said.
Last vacancy in 2018
Councilwoman Hannah Stone was the last person named to fill a council vacancy on Oct. 1, 2018.
Some 24 Bellingham registered voters applied for the at-large council position created when Councilwoman Roxanne Murphy resigned to accept a job as assistant city manager in Valdez, Alaska.
Stone was chosen unanimously on the first ballot after the council narrowed its choice to five finalists.
Her name was drawn from a bowl containing the finalists’ names on folded sheets of paper and no other votes were taken because Stone received unanimous support on the first ballot.
Stone won a seat as the Ward 1 representative in the November 2019 election.
Coincidentally, two of the other four finalists for the open seat that Stone was named to in 2018 — Lisa Anderson and Hollie Huthman — have since been elected to the council.
