Tag: IRV

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Not So Super …

Early voting for the October 3rd Memphis city election runs from September 13th to September 28th. Much attention has been focused on the mayoral contest, in which incumbent Jim Strickland is facing off against two principal challengers — former Mayor Willie Herenton and County Commissioner Tami Sawyer — and several other minor candidates.

That’s a big question for Memphis voters to decide, but I have another, perhaps more important question for you: Who are the four city council candidates you’re going to vote for? That’s not a typo; if you vote in Memphis, you’ll be charged with selecting four candidates for city council.

“Why?” you might rightly ask. Shouldn’t I just have to vote for a candidate who lives in my district? Yes. But here’s the weird part: You actually live in two districts — and one of them is Super! So super, in fact, that it has three representatives.

Welcome to the wild and wacky world of Memphis City Council districting, a system originally created to assure that black voters wouldn’t win, oh, say, two-thirds of the council’s 13 seats — a percentage that’s representative of the city’s population.

A little history lesson: Prior to 1991, there were six “at-large” council seats not tied to any geographical area, and seven geographical district seats. A judge ruled in 1991 that the six at-large seats were specifically created to dilute the voting strength of the city’s African-American population and charged the city council at that time to come up with a new districting plan. In response, the council created the super district concept, which basically retained the old six at-large council seats but divided them into two at-large districts of three each. So, basically there were still six at-large seats.

Pretty clever, eh?

There are still seven districts that reflect various geographical areas of the city. Since they’re not super, let’s call them Normal Districts. If you live in Memphis, you live in one of those seven Normal Districts. They work pretty much like democracy is supposed to work: You vote for someone who lives in the area where you live to represent you on the city council.

The Super Districts are called 8 and 9, and they represent, roughly, the western and eastern halves of the city. Each super district has three representatives, who can live anywhere in their half of the city. Each super district council seat has a number, called a “position.” So, in my case, for example, I vote for a District 5 council representative and also vote for candidates running for Position 1, Position 2, and Position 3 in Super District 9.

All clear? No? Good, I’m pretty sure that’s the way the plan is supposed to work. Purely by accident, of course, Super District 8 is predominately African-American and Super District 9 predominately not. Since the super district system was created, all of 8’s council representatives have been black and all of 9’s have been white. So weird, eh?

There are 26 people running for the six super district seats in this year’s election. Which isn’t at all confusing. And here’s another fun fact: Since the super districts’ candidates only have to live in a particular half of the city, all your elected representatives from a super district could theoretically live on the same block or attend the same church … or belong to the same country club, if you get my drift. To run for a super district seat, you have to have enough money (and volunteers) to campaign in half of the city, which favors candidates with more resources, meaning money.

The council election process is screwed up, and this city council has done much to keep it that way, mainly by fighting tooth and nail to prevent the Instant Runoff Voting process that’s been approved twice by Memphis voters.

When the redistricting process comes around again after the census in 2020, we should insist that the city be divided into 13 geographical council districts. If it takes a ballot referendum to get that done, then so be it.

There is nothing super about super districts, except that they’re a super good way to keep Memphis from having a truly representative city council.

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Editorial Opinion

Memphis City Council: Circumventing the People’s Will

On a preceding page of this issue, law professor Steve Mulroy, who paid his political dues as a two-term member of the Shelby County Commission, exhorts the candidates in this year’s city election to attend to certain overdue tasks.

One of those is that of reviving the efforts, sabotaged at two governmental levels, including by the current Memphis City Council, to institute Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in local elections. One of the scandals of the year just passed has been a successful joint effort by the aforesaid incumbent council members and the office of the Tennessee Secretary of State to suppress what had already been planned as a trial of RCV during the now ongoing Memphis municipal election.

Their efforts included, on the council side, the patently illegal use of taxpayer funds to compensate city lobbyists in Nashville for supporting legislation to ban RCV (also known as Instant Runoff Voting) in all state elections. The council further authorized the use of more public money to pay a public relations agency for advertisements advocating a “No” vote on a citywide referendum last year to uphold previous voter support of RCV.

The first such public referendum vote occurred in 2008 and was lopsidedly in favor of RCV. A second referendum in 2018 should have been unnecessary, but, once held, at council direction, it, too, passed overwhelmingly. As we noted editorially at the time, our own elected city council was using our own taxpayer money in an effort to cancel out what had been our duly authorized vote in favor of Ranked Choice Voting.

Nor has the council majority ceased in its efforts to strike down a public initiative. Council attorney Allan Wade has been directed by the incumbent council members to seek further legal “remedies” to counteract the people’s will.

Allan Wade

Meanwhile, the state Election Coordinator, which is a part of the publicly endowed Secretary of State’s office, issued a ruling, citing a hodge-podge of questionable reasons, why it regarded the RCV process as “illegal” and imposed a directive on the Shelby County Election Coordinator, Linda Phillips, not to follow through on this year’s or any other future implementation of RCV.

Ranked Choice Voting, it will be remembered, calls upon voters to rank their preferred choices, usually in a 1-2-3 sequence. Should there be no majority winner for an election position, the votes of runner-up candidates would be given appropriate weight and reassigned to the top two finishers in accordance with the preferences established in voters’ rankings. Eventually a majority winner would be declared thereby.

The method saves time, money, and effort, and makes unnecessary follow-up runoff elections that, in the case of the October 3rd council district elections, would be scheduled for late November, at a time when the interests of the voting public would have shifted elsewhere, resulting in miniscule turnouts with inevitably misleading final results.

It would seem to be a small thing to ask — that our elected officials observe the people’s will in such matters as public referenda. The fact that they have not and that they have pursued under-handed means of counteracting those expressions of the democratic process is an embarrassment and an outrage.

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News News Blog

Morgan Got Some Answers on Election Money But Not All

Budget season is now underway at Memphis City Hall.

Memphis City Council member Worth Morgan did not hold the city council’s portion of the budget during talks yesterday but said if “significant progress” is not made on a review of the funds spent for an council-led “education campaign” last year, he’ll revive the issue.

Five council members approved spending about $40,000 on a “public information campaign” on three referenda to “explain their potential benefits” of them and “counter some of the misinformation presented.” The campaign was to answer what council members described as a flood of phone calls to their office from the public about the referenda. (Get more details about the campaign in the linked stories below.)

Morgan

Three council members — Ford Canale, Kemp Conrad, and Worth Morgan — voted against the campaign. At the time, Morgan promised that ”every dollar spent by the chairman on this informational campaign will be tracked, accounted for, and made easily available to the public.”

He said last week, he’d be in favor of holding the council’s portion of the budget this year until he had more answers. He got some answers, he said, and did not hold a vote on the council’s budget during a budget committee meeting Monday. However, he said he’d bring the issue up again later if “significant progress” was not made to clarify his questions.

Here’s what Morgan said during that budget committee meeting Monday:

“There’d been some discussion dealing with me about this city council budget until we had a full accounting of how some of the money was spent last year, specifically the public referenda campaign.

“We didn’t quite have the answers yet. But there’s been some sincere movement forward on that issue. I’ve called Deidre Malone today. She was very responsive. But we weren’t able to connect. We traded voice mails; trying to shine some light.

“Now I have the financial disclosure statements from the city council referendum committee, from the Diversity Memphis (political action committee — PAC), as well as invoices from the Carter Malone Group and the city of Memphis.
[pullquote-1]”So, I have a lot more information than we did before. And I’m happy to share it. It’s just some of the information in the numbers that don’t match up on how things were spent. So, we’re still trying to track down exactly what of that $40,000…how it was spent.

“I think that’s something that we promised to the people when we did the campaign, at least I did. I think most people agreed to it in executive committee.
[pullquote-2]”There was some discussion about…if we didn’t have those answers by today, would we delay this vote? I’m not interested in making that motion or holding [the budget]. But I just wanted to put that out there.

“If anybody has questions about those invoices or those disclosures, I’m happy to share them. We’re going to continue to be tracking it down.

“If we don’t make significant progress again in the next two weeks or four weeks, I think it might be a better place to have this discussion in the audit committee.”

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News News Blog

Council Budget May Be Held for Review of Referenda Campaign Cash

A Memphis City Council member wants to hold approval of the council’s portion of the city’s budget until after a full, public review of the nearly $40,000 the council spent on an education campaign for three referenda last year.

In November, voters here gave the thumbs down to all three referenda before them in November — one that would have eliminated runoff elections, another that would have given longer terms for the mayor and city council members, and another that would have eliminated instant runoff voting (IRV).

In October before the vote, five council members approved spending money on a “public information campaign” on the referenda to “explain their potential benefits” and “counter some of the misinformation presented.” The campaign was to answer what council members described as a flood of phone calls to their office from the public about the referenda.

Three council members — Ford Canale, Kemp Conrad, and Worth Morgan — voted against the campaign. At the time, Morgan promised that ”every dollar spent by the chairman on this informational campaign will be tracked, accounted for, and made easily available to the public.” 

Morgan

On Wednesday, he said there’s still not been a full accounting of the money. From documents he’s reviewed, Morgan said the money into and out of the campaign don’t match up. He said he understands it could be mathematical error and he said he hopes the discrepancy is an error.

Budget talks got underway at city hall last month. Morgan said it’s the right time to review the nearly $40,000 spent on the referenda campaign.

“We need to have a whole accounting of where the money from the city council account actually got spent, and we still don’t have that,” Morgan said. “This is a perfect time to review it, ask for it. And if we can’t get it, I would be inclined to hold the city council budget until we do.”
[pullquote-1] Morgan asked Berlin Boyd, then the council’s chairman, in November how the funds were spent, according to a story in The Commercial Appeal. At the time, Boyd said he was still waiting on final numbers. He said the money was given to the Carter Malone Group to create the campaign.

That campaign did include advertisements in the Memphis Flyer, The New Tri-State Defender, and IHeartRadio, according to Steve Mulroy, a former Shelby County Commission member and outspoken critic of the instant runoff voting referendum. He said the campaign targeted African Americans.

Steve Mulroy

“They made a conscious campaign decision that the only way to beat these referenda would be to, in my view, falsely suggest that this was somehow bad for African American voters and exploit racial fears,” Mulroy said. “So from their perspective, it was just a smart campaign move, ‘we’re going to spend the money where we think it would be most effective.’

“But that just underscores and puts in stark relief that this was not in any sense, a public education campaign for the city of Memphis as a whole. It was a targeted campaign effort to defeat referenda that would have made elections more competitive.”
[pullquote-2] Morgan said the campaign was a “serious mistake” and that it just looked bad for council members to advocate for something that would have likely benefitted them.

The resolution for the campaign money never appeared on any city council agenda and came up for a vote toward the end of a regular meeting.

“The reason that’s done is to usually is to limit debate,” Morgan said. “If you know something’s going to be coming, you know what it says, you’re much more able to talk about it and debate it. Then, somebody that might oppose it, they might not even be able to be there to oppose it because they didn’t have any notice. 

“That’s been something that happened a few times on the council over the last four years. Hopefully, there’s not any more patience for it and we won’t let it happen again.”

The resolution for the campaign passed with same-night minutes, meaning the vote couldn’t be undone at a later date.

Aaron Fowles, president of Save IRV, a group formed to defeat the instant runoff referendum, said the matter is still important even if the referenda were defeated.

“There are still roadblocks that have been erected by Berlin Boyd and others,” Fowles said last month. “Berlin Boyd was on the news saying, ‘people like how they vote now’ and completely ignoring he fact that people voted to use a different method of voting.

Jackson Baker

IRV supporters at victory party. L to r: Aaron Fowles, Steve Mulroy, and Racquel Collins

“The city council still has got to do a few things to implement (IRV). You know, we’d like to believe that they will listen to what voters have said and act on that.”

Mulroy said the campaign needs further review on simple principle.

“I think the public needs to understand what happened and how there was a conscious effort to avoid transparency in this taxpayer-funded propaganda game,” Mulroy said.
[pullquote-3] The city council is slated to review its own budget for the next year on Monday, May 6th at 4:45 p.m. Watch it live here.

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News News Blog

Ed Helms Joins Fight to Save Instant Runoff Voting

Ed Helms Joins Fight to Save Instant Runoff Voting

Actor and comedian Ed Helms jumped into the Memphis election fray with a video criticizing local politicians for trying to eliminate instant runoff voting.  

Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence appeared in a similar video last month.

Here’s what the local Save Instant Runoff Voting said about the Helms video:

“Ed Helms, comedian and actor, borrows the voice of Memphians who support voting against all the November (referendums).

“With just five days to go, we’re in a race to stop the city council from tricking voters into undoing the will of the people. We already passed Instant Runoff Voting, and this is our chance to stop politicians from overturning the voters.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Kyle Passes On Issue of Council Funding of Public Funds for Referenda Campaign

CREDIT: JB

JB

Kyle listening to arguments in case

After a four-day hesitation, during which time a palpable optimism flared among opponents of the three city council-supported referenda, Chancellor Jim Kyle reverted to form on Monday, ruling, as he had on an earlier request to excise the referenda from the ballot, that, as he said both times, the issue of the council’s use of public funds (estimated in the range of $30,000 to $40,000) to “educate” voters was not “ripe” for judgment.

Although Kyle acknowledged that the plaintiffs — three individuals and the Save IRV organization — had standing (a point that attorneys for city had contested), he suggested again, as he had on October 11th, that the rights or wrongs of the matter could best be adjudicated in the wake of an actual election, or at least at a time when specific consequences, as against potential ones (“mays” and “maybes,” he called them), could be alleged.

Plaintiffs Erika Sugarmon, John Marek, and Sam Goff had all presented themselves as past candidates for political office who intended to run in the city election of 2019 and would face improper obstacles favoring incumbent opponents should Ranked Choice Voting (aka Instant Runoff Voting) not be instituted, as provisionally planned by the Election Commission but as opposed in a council-sponsored referendum.

Kyle was not impressed by the plaintiffs’ argument, suggesting that he had no intention of granting either side what he referred to ironically as “a fair advantage.”

City council attorney Allan Wade, referring to Ranked Choice Voting as “a failed experiment,” expressed satisfaction with the ruling and claimed to reporters, as he had in the hearing, that the council had the right to use taxpayer funds to “influence” or “educate” voters (he used both verbs at different times) and that Mayor Jim Strickland was legally bound as city administrator to assist in executing the strategy, which opponents had likened to the council’s putting “a thumb on the scale.”

Bryce Ashby, attorney for the plaintiffs, said his side still maintained hope that the mayor could exercise independent authority by declining to sign papers that would put into action a public-information campaign as envisioned by the council. Deidre Malone, of Malone Advertising and Media Group, has confirmed that she has been approached by the council about assisting in an organized media campaign in favor of the anti-IRV referenda and two others on the ballot.

Strickland has made no public statement on the controversy.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

DNC Head Talks Up Ranked Choice Voting in Memphis

DNC chair Tom Perez at the National Civil Rights Museum on Saturday.

Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, paid a stop in Memphis on Saturday, at the National Civil Rights Museum for an installment of the DNC’s “Seat at the Table” tour, designed to galvanize the involvement of African-American women in the party.

In his farewell message to attendees, Perez took note of one of the major issues on the November 6th ballot — the referendum for Memphis voters on repeal of Ranked Choice Voting, a method for determining winners, sans runoffs, in multi-candidate races in which no candidate has a majority.

“I’ve spent a lot of time on that issue,” said Perez, after giving a hat-tip to Steve Mulroy, the University of Memphis law professor and former county commissioner who has been a major proponent of RCV (aka Instant Runoff Voting), scheduled to be employed in the 2019 city election, unless repealed.

Perez suggested that “the Republicans” were “trying to take it away,” though in fact it was incumbents of the nonpartisan Memphis City Council who implanted the repeal referendum on the ballot.

“If I were living here, I’d vote no on that referendum, because you’ve already voted for it,” said Perez, who referred to a previous referendum, in 2008, when Memphis voters approved the process by a 70 percent majority. “It forces candidates to talk to everyone, instead of just that one base. It fosters civility because you can’t ignore 70 percent of the people.

Perez went on: “Talk to them! What a radical concept. That’s why y’all voted for it, and that’s why they don’t want it.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Scary Home Companion

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between incompetence (or, to be generous, mistakes) and intentionally deceptive behavior.

Take the recent brouhahas regarding the Shelby County ballot, for example. It’s possible to believe that no one at the Election Commission bothered to test the “enlarge type” function on the voting machines, so they were as surprised as the rest of us when some voters discovered that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Karl Dean’s name was bounced to the second page of the ballot. That would be a mistake, at best.

If the commission did test the “enlarge type” function, saw that Dean’s name got bumped, and thought, “Meh, no big deal,” despite the fact that state law mandates that the minority party’s candidate be listed second on the ballot, well, that would be incompetence, at best. At worst, it would reflect a conscious decision to tilt the scales to Republican candidate Bill Lee, whose name remained atop the ballot no matter the type size.

Rodney Dangerfield

Hard to tell. Though it’s pretty difficult to imagine any sentient election officials thinking such a glitch would go unnoticed and/or uncontested.

Similarly, if you were generous, you could make the case that the three referenda on the ballot for Memphis voters are just worded clumsily. Clumsy verbiage is a mistake. Intentionally confusing language is not, and after trying without success to wrap my brain around the syntax of these fool things, I think it’s pretty clear that the ordinances were intentionally written by the city council and its attorney to confuse voters. They are attempting to extend term limits from two terms to three terms, but they don’t have the courage to ask for it honestly. They are attempting to repeal Instant Runoff Voting before it’s even been implemented. Needless to say, all three proposed ordinances should be handily rejected. This is done by voting “Against,” despite the fact that the Election Commission’s sample ballot instructed voters that their options would be to vote “No” or “Yes.” Just another simple mistake, one can assume. Or not.

Of course, sometimes it’s really easy to tell when someone’s being deceptive, as in the case of President Trump, who makes blatant lying a central element of his persona. It’s not even news anymore. Here’s a recent example: The president said initially that the Saudi arms deal would provide 40,000 jobs. This week, in citing the number of jobs that would be lost if the Saudi deal got cancelled (because of the inconvenient assassination of a journalist), the president claimed it would be 500,000 jobs. The next day, it became 600,000 jobs. The following day, at a rally, Trump claimed a million jobs would be lost.

In 2017, the entire defense-contracting industry in the U.S. employed 375,000 people. The million-jobs claim is utter and complete horse puckey. But here’s the thing: Trump doesn’t care. And that’s because no one in his base or his party holds him accountable. For Trump, lying and exaggeration are features, not a bug.

As I watched clips from Trump’s traveling roadshows this week, I had a revelation: He’s the Garrison Keillor of the deplorables, weaving tales and fables and jokes tailored to their predispositions and fears. Scary Home Companion.

If he says there are Middle Eastern terrorists in the Honduran caravan, his people cheer. He doesn’t have to prove it; he just has to say it. If he says Brett Kavanaugh graduated at the top of his class at Yale, no one will fact-check him, at least no one he cares about. The Diane Feinstein imitations, the one-liners, the nicknames, the comic shrugs, and facial contortions — it’s all part of President Dangerfield’s schtick. It’s meta bloviation — beyond truth — and without parallel in our presidential history.

After seeing all the political vitriol pouring forth on social media, I’ve decided America’s great divide has come down to this: You either buy into Trump’s act, or you think he’s totally full of crap. That’s it. That’s the only issue. We’re a binary country now. Trump has finally succeeded in making everything about him; it’s a narcissist’s wet dream.

So, when considering the candidates for varous offices, ask yourself this question: “Who would Trump vote for?” That ought to clarify things, one way or the other.

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News News Blog

Council Chair Pushes Public for Votes on Referenda, Move Called ‘Unethical’

Council chairman Berlin Boyd

Memphis City Council Chairman Berlin Boyd used his most-recent, widespread chairman’s recap email to lobby citizens on upcoming referendums — a move some in Memphis don’t agree with.


Gordon Alexander, longtime Midtown activist, called Boyd’s attempts to lobby citizens to vote for three city council-related referendums on the November ballot “unethical.”

“In my opinion, it is unethical for the chairman of the city council to use this platform to urge a vote on an item that will affect him and his fellow council members,” Alexander said. “We don’t need to extend term limits. Because of their indifference to Midtown and our interests, we feel there are some on City Council who have already worn out their welcome.”

In his chairman’s recap, which reviews some of the moves by the council following a meeting, Boyd said that restricting council members to two consecutive terms in office “constricts” the amount of work they can do in their districts.

“By extending the term limit to three consecutive terms, council members have more time to work on behalf of their constituents and to see the fruits of items they have proposed,” Boyd wrote in his recap. “Thus, council members are just beginning to legislate effectively. The third term would be used to finish business and set up the next generation of council members. Vote “YES” to referendum number 1 to ensure the council is able to effectively work for you.”

[pullquote-1]

The recap continues, asking citizens to vote in favor of repealing Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), also known as ranked-choice voting, for council single district seats, as IRV “will disenfranchise the very voters proponents argue it will assist,” Boyd said.

Boyd did not immediately respond to the Flyer’s inquiry about his use of the recap to lobby citizens.

The three referendums in question, with simplified explanations provided by the League of Women Voters, are below.

Courtesy of the Memphis Public Libraries

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Editorial Opinion

On Saving IRV

President Trump’s act of political sabotage by his cavalier scuttling on Tuesday afternoon of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more familiarly known as “the Iran Nuclear Deal,” is not the only ongoing case of official political vandalism. There is some in our own midst.

There is, for example, the fact that important local initiatives passed overwhelmingly by popular referendum within the past decade are in grave peril of being abrogated. A press conference held Tuesday morning at the IBEW Union Hall by a bipartisan citizens’ group calling itself Save IRV Memphis noted for the record that a 2008 city referendum in favor of IRV (Instant Runoff Voting, aka Ranked Choice Voting) had passed by a 71 percent vote in its favor. In a nutshell, what the IRV process would do is eliminate the costly and ill-attended runoff elections required under the present system in district elections without a first-round majority winner.

In the words of a Save IRV Memphis press release, “IRV requires only one trip to the polls, yet still elects officials with broad bases of support. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins a majority of the first place votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots are redistributed according to the preferences of the voter.”

Recounting subsequent history, the group pointed out that various opponents of the process, both locally and in the state capital of Nashville, had, through artificial obstacles, including overt misinformation campaigns, contrived to delay implementation of the process ever since; and that a new county Election Coordinator Linda Phillips had swept these misconceptions aside and scheduled a trial of the IRV or RCV process for next year’s Memphis city election.

Thereupon, as the Save IRV group indicated, the incumbent members of the current Memphis City Council adopted a policy of blocking the IRV process at all costs, voting unanimously for a new referendum on the subject this November and meanwhile underhandedly instructing city lobbyists to try to get the General Assembly in Nashville to pass legislation voiding the process statewide. Luckily the legislative sabotage effort failed.

What caused the council to act so perversely? Former Councilman Myron Lowery, one of the IRV supporters at the IBEW press conference, provided the answer: incumbent protection, pure and simple. The council members acted against IRV for the same reason they have attempted to subvert another prior citizen referendum establishing a limit of two terms for elected city officials. Lowery, the longest-serving African-American council member ever, also debunked a spurious claim that IRV would be counter to the political needs of blacks. “Race has nothing to do with this process,” Lowery said, conclusively disposing of this red herring.

We wish godspeed to the campaign launched Tuesday by Lowery and the other participating members of the Save IRV group, including spokesperson Theryn C. Bond; Tami Sawyer and Sam Goff, the Democratic and Republican candidates for the District 7 County Commission seat; and lawyer John Marek. The bipartisan nature of the Save IRV movement is further indicated by the support given it by Democratic 9th District congressman Steve Cohen and GOP state Senate majority leader Mark Norris.