Election debate continues
Ketchum weighs merits of rules change
"More than 20 percent of our voting population is
using the bullet vote to elect the candidate of their choice, and that is
not fair to the people of Ketchum who do not understand the power of the
bullet vote."
-Randy Hall, Ketchum City Councilman
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
About a dozen Ketchum residents attended a Ketchum City
Council meeting last week to protest the council’s recent decision to
change the way the city conducts its elections. The debate will continue
at a meeting Monday at 6 p.m.
"I’d like to see this room full," Councilman
David Hutchinson said. "It’d make our job a lot easier."
Last month, the council voted unanimously to require
council candidates to run for specific seats, and in so doing, to waive
the three readings commonly used to change or draft city ordinances.
Councilman Maurice Charlat was absent from that meeting
and was upset with his colleagues’ apparent haste.
Under the new system, council seats have assigned numbers,
and candidates must select seats they wish to run for. Previously, the two
candidates receiving the most votes won the two available seats.
After members of the public protested the council’s
decision to change the voting regulations, the council decided to hold a
series of public hearings on the issue.
"I was wrong with my vote to do away with the three
hearings," Councilman Randy Hall said. "I made a mistake. Before
I waive any three readings in the future, I will make sure it’s a
procedural matter."
Though council members all agree they made a mistake in
waiving the three public hearings, but do not yet agree on a voting
system.
At the council’s last meeting, Hall and Hutchinson
argued in favor of the assigned seats system, while Charlat, who later
said he opposes the new system, remained silent.
"I should be able to, as a citizen [candidate], go
after the person I disagree with," Hall said, referring to a benefit
he perceives will be gained from the assigned seat system.
That benefit, however, only relates to challenging
incumbents or candidates who have already filed, BSU political science
professor Jim Weatherby said in an interview.
Weatherby also said an unintended consequence from the
assigned-seat system can be that candidates may tend to file for an open
seat, rather than filing to run against an incumbent.
Hall also said he disagrees with so-called bullet voting
as well. Bullet votes are cast when voters choose only one candidate to
avoid helping a competitor, even though ballots instruct them to vote for
two candidates.
"More than 20 percent of our voting population is
using the bullet vote to elect the candidate of their choice, and that is
not fair to the people of Ketchum who do not understand the power of the
bullet vote," he said.
In the 1999 city council election, which was won by Hall
and Charlat, 205 out of 748 voters, or 27 percent, cast bullet votes.
It’s a number that surprised Weatherby, who qualified
his surprise by saying he hasn’t carefully studied the issue.
"It certainly tells you something about the intensity
of their vote," he said.
In the past 10 years, between 10 to 27 percent of those
who voted in Ketchum elections have cast bullets. In 1997, 17 percent of
the city’s voters cast bullets, and in 1995, 24 percent of voters cast
bullets.
Those are numbers that indicate some level of organization
behind the bullets, Hall and Hutchinson believe.
"I think it’s fundamentally unfair,"
Hutchinson said. "We know that an insider group of people have been
setting up bullet vote campaigns. Two hundred bullet votes in a town of
this size is a ton."
Ketchum resident and former Ketchum Councilwoman Sue Noel
acknowledged that there could be some organization behind the city’s
bullet votes but said she doesn’t see it as a negative attribute of the
winners-take-all voting system.
"I support their right to do that," she said.
Charlat also sees the bullet-vote argument as "an
argument that has no real value." Use of a bullet vote is common, he
pointed out, and most people are aware of it.
Charlat’s arguments against the new system, so far, are
simpler, an "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" sentiment.
"I think we’ve heard from the people so far,"
he said. "What we’ve heard is a definite and vocal negative
attitude toward the change.
"For some reason we fixed it. Why?"
