Webster wisely advocates moving elections to November, or: Recommendations on fixing Kyle’s abysmal voting rate

During last night’s discussion on proposed changes to Kyle’s charter, Mayor Todd Webster brought up the subject of moving municipal elections from May to November. If the goal is to increase voter turnout — and that is a reasonable goal — the evidence proves holding municipal elections in November will accomplish that.

The principle argument against holding elections in November is the desire not to have the city’s elections buried beneath those of the President, senators, house members, legislators, etc., especially since those are partisan elections and Kyle’s are non-partisan. One of the arguments is that voters who vote straight ticket will simply do that and not even bother to cast ballots for locally elected officials. But there is a simple way to prevent this from happening, which I will get to shortly, when I suggest my remedies for fixing Kyle’s City Council election process.

I was amused when I read in today’s Austin American-Statesman that election officials in the capitol city were lamenting that only 11.4 percent of the registered voters turned out Tuesday to vote on whether to issue bonds for a new court house. In Tuesday’s elections, 11.2 percent of the registered voters cast ballots in San Marcos, 10.8 percent turned out in Buda and 30.61 percent voted in Mountain City. Neither San Marcos nor Buda should brag about voter turnout but those numbers are more than twice the number of voters in Kyle’s last general election when 4.91 percent turned out in May.

I will predict that moving Kyle’s municipal elections from May to November, as the mayor so adroitly recommended, will at least double the percentage of voters that now come to the polls here.

Now, back to how to avoid being buried beneath those partisan ballot choices. That’s simple. Those elections take place in Texas in even numbered years. Simply hold the Kyle municipal elections in odd numbered years and that partisan subject is no longer an issue.

But other changes need to be made to allow this to happen and these changes also will increase voter turnout.

Currently, Kyle holds a City Council election every single year. That’s way too many. That results in election fatigue for Kyle voters. Cut that number in half, thus allowing a council election in odd-numbered years only. To accomplish this, the terms of the council members must be changed. I recommend two-year terms with a limit of four terms for each office holder. That way, in November of every odd numbered years, voters will be voting on all six council members, plus the mayor. That also will increase interest in the election and thus increase the number of voters going to the polls.

It also solves another problem, one raised by council member Damon Fogley during last night’s discussion. State law requires that officials elected to positions that have terms of longer than two years must be elected by a majority of the voters. Fogley lamented that in the general election he received 49.7 percent of the vote and, thus was subjected to a runoff. By limiting the council member’s terms to two years, you could have the elections decided by a plurality vote (i.e., the person with the most votes wins, regardless of the percentage) and avoid the need of and the costs for a runoff election. This also would increase voter turnout.

But, one may ask, if you stage elections this way, how do you avoid having a turnover of all seven council members every eight years? Well, there’s no way you can eliminate that possibility 100 percent, but you can reduce the chances of it happening almost to zero. On the first election after the charter change required to make all of the above a reality, voters cast ballots for all seven council members — the mayor and the six other council members. Out of those six, the two candidates receiving the most votes fall under the four-term limitation rule. The two winning candidates receiving the third and fourth most votes are limited to three terms and the final two are limited to two terms. After that, the four-term limit applies to all persons newly elected to the council.

Finally, I’m going to address the argument of single member versus at-large districts. Currently Kyle elects three council members from individual districts and three at-large. The argument for increasing the number of single member districts is that, at present, it is easily feasible the council could be composed of five individuals who all live in the same subdivision. The argument I’ve heard most against single member districts is that constituents desire to have more than one council member to listen to their concerns.

Here’s a solution to both problems, and one that I expressed during the citizen comments section of last night’s charter discussion. Have all six council members and the mayor elected by all Kyle voters (another step that will increase voter participation) but require that any candidate running for Places 1 and 4 on the council must reside in District 1, candidates seeking Places 2 and 5 must live in District 2 and those going for Places 3 and 6 have to reside in District 3. That provides the even geographical distribution but makes all council members directly accountable to all the citizens of Kyle.

And isn’t that what we really want?