Remember back before the Charter Review Committee was formed, when the City Commission decided to propose five changes to the city charter regarding election reform? One of the proposed changes is to implement a lottery system to determine the order in which candidates' names will be placed on the ballot. The argument is that being first on the ballot can give a candidate a 5-10% bump in votes.
Men's Health magazine recently wrote of another candidate group that gets a vote bump:
"Uninformed voters may be more dangerous to democracy than low voter turnout. According to research by Princeton University professor Larry Bartels, Ph.D., incumbents receive a 5 to 10 percent boost from politically ignorant voters who cast ballots based on name recognition alone. Check Project Vote Smart, a non-partisan, nonprofit research organization, before you hit the polls. vote-smart.org"
So how do we solve this one?
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The only way to do it fair would be to alternate the order on all the ballots. This would require, in a two man race, for the order to be alternated between individual ballots. There are a few cities that are doing this.
Another thing that keeps coming up is when to have the election. Some people like to have it in November to allow the maximum number of people to vote. Some people like it at a different time because you get fewer voters and are able to control the election a little more. Some people think a runoff in January is ridiculous and they do not want to hold a primary because nobody will vote.
I believe the charter needs to be changed to reflect the following.
There will be a primary in September. If there are only 2 candidates, there is no primary for that seat and the two candidates go straight to the November ballot. If there are more than 2 candidates, the top two vote getters go to the November ballot---Even if one candidate gets over 50%. This way all commissioners would be chosen in November, when voter turnout is highest and you don't have to hold a runoff election that just costs the taxpayers money.
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