For the week of May 21 - 27, 2003

How should your vote be counted?

Sun Valley City Council
debates election processes

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By GREGORY FOLEY
Express Staff Writer

Sun Valley City Council members last week agreed to investigate whether the city should change how members of the four-person council are elected by the public.

Responding to a proposal by Sun Valley resident Milt Adam, council members on Thursday, May 15, debated whether City Council members should be elected to fill designated seats or as at-large candidates that earn the most votes.

"I think the city is better served by having open elections rather than designated-seat elections," Adam told the council.

At issue is how the city conducts its bi-annual elections for City Council seats.

Under a system approved in 1995, the city currently asks the electorate to vote every other year for two separate candidates seeking to fill specific numbered seats on the council. Terms on the council last for four years, with two members of the panel being re-elected or replaced every two years.

Candidates are required in the process to designate which of the two seats up for election they intend to fill.

Adam last week argued that designated-seat elections clearly favor incumbents and are generally inappropriate for small cities.

He said that designated-seat elections are problematic chiefly because they do not require incumbents to campaign against each other. In addition, he noted that the two candidates who gain the most votes are not elected to the council if they happen to be running for the same council seat.

"I don’t see how that benefits democracy, as such," he said.

Adam noted that in the 1999 Sun Valley City Council election—for designated Seats 1 and 2 on the panel—three candidates ran for Seat 1 and the candidate for Seat 2, Lud Renick, ran unopposed. Ultimately, Renick and Council President Latham Williams won the two seats.

(Adams was one of two candidates who challenged Williams for his seat. The two seats will be up for re-election next November.)

Seats 3 and 4—currently occupied by Councilman Kevin Laird and Councilwoman Ann Agnew, respectively—were last up for election in November 2001.

Adam noted that the city of Ketchum—after a long public debate on the matter—in February returned to an open-seat election process after spending approximately two years under the designated-seat election process.

He also noted that only eight of Idaho’s 114 cities hold designated-seat elections for city councils, most of them larger cities.

Councilman Laird said the 1995 decision by the city of Sun Valley to engage in designated-seat elections was done primarily to prompt more political debate among candidates. The process was meant to encourage challengers to run against a specific incumbent while focusing on specific issues, he said.

Councilman Renick said he does not believe incumbents are always granted an advantage. "Look at the local history," he said. "The incumbents do not have an edge in the last three elections in Sun Valley."

Ketchum resident Mickey Garcia said that both systems have drawbacks, with open-seat elections promoting so-called "bullet voting," the so-called practice of voters selecting only one candidate for two or more open seats.

Wilson said having designated seats keeps elections from becoming "a popularity vote."

However, city resident Jon Thorson said designated-seat elections typically do not foster debate. He added that he believes bullet voting "is a person’s right."

Thorson and Adam asked council members to conduct an advisory vote on the issue.

Council members directed city staff to research the results of city elections since 1980, prior to an ensuing discussion on the matter next month.

 

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