Editorial: Mail in a ‘no’ vote to protect city’s elections

Why would you want to force a low-turnout city election into a potentially lower-turnout city runoff election?

A. To get another chance after losing the first time.

B. To stack the deck because you can really get out the vote while the few members of the general public who were paying attention lose interest.

C. To cost taxpayers at least $500,000 a pop because it’s their money, not yours.

D. To water down the nonpartisan nature of municipal elections to favor a special-interest candidate.

E. All of the above.

No matter how proponents of the current mail-in city election try to spin it, the answer is “E.”

Ballots started arriving in Albuquerque mailboxes last week asking city voters one question: should any city election in which a candidate does not win 50 percent of the vote be forced into a runoff? The answer that supports a voting democracy is “no.”

Municipal elections already have abysmally low turnouts. Just 7.8 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the 2007 city election; 21.5 percent in 2009; 9.2 percent in 20011. That means a tiny fraction of the population determined the outcome of those races. What are the prospects for turnout in myriad City Election 2.0 contests, especially if they become so routine there’s voter fatigue?

And why would taxpayers want to foot each $500,000 mail-in/$750,000 polling-center tab?

Supporters of changing the 40 percent threshold to win a city election claim the nonpartisan nature allows popular candidates to split the vote and unpopular candidates to walk away with a win. Yet under their proposed 50 percent margin Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton would not have been elected president. Expecting at least half the voters in a nonpartisan contest to line up even more so than in partisan races undermines the underlying design — multiple choice.

The current 40 percent threshold is sufficient to ensure random fringe/special interest candidates who really don’t represent the will of the voters aren’t inadvertently elected.

Voters should protect the nonpartisan nature of city elections — and the taxpayers’ checkbook — and reject this change.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.