Heber City has already used ranked choice voting for elections in 2021 and 2023. On Tuesday, March 4, the city council debated whether to keep the system in place for November’s races, when two councilmembers and the mayor will be on the ballot.
But there wasn’t a clear consensus about how to move forward.
Heber resident Tracy Taylor told the council she believes ranked choice voting favors wealthy and well-educated voters, who may have more time and resources to research their choices.
And local Patty Sprunt said the ballots are not intuitive for some voters to fill out.
“I don’t know how to explain it to my neighbors, especially the elderly neighbors,” she said.
Resident Mike Hewlett also said he’s opposed to ranked choice voting.
“It disenfranchises voters who don’t know what the outcome is going to be, because you put your first choice first, and your ballot can get exhausted awfully quick,” he said. “So your votes can be completely made irrelevant based on the way the voting goes.”
Ranked choice voting eliminates the need for a government to hold a primary election. Voters can rank as many or as few of the candidates as they want. When ballots are processed, if no candidate has a majority of votes, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated. All those ballots are then redistributed to the candidates those voters ranked second.
The process repeats until someone crosses the threshold to win.
Heber City Councilmember Aaron Cheatwood said he thought ranked choice voting was a great option, but he would vote not to use it again based on the community’s feedback.
“I think there’s enough confusion, and I think there’s enough lack of understanding,” he said. “There were enough people going out there saying, vote for us three, or us four, or these two only – there was enough of that that I think we maybe got bad results because of that.”
Councilmember Mike Johnston, meanwhile, said he thought the system could be an antidote to political polarization.
“You didn’t vote for Ron DeSantis because you knew he wouldn’t win, so you voted for Trump. Or you didn’t vote for Bernie Sanders because you know he wouldn’t win, so you had to vote for Hillary,” he said. “That’s where we’re at in this country, and what do we get from it? A completely dysfunctional government. I think ranked choice voting would solve that problem, because you would get to vote for who you really think is best.”
He argued ranking choices should come naturally to voters.
In the end, the council opted to delay a decision until April. Local governments have until May 1 to tell the lieutenant governor’s office how they’ll administer elections.
Cheatwood also suggested sending out a survey between now and the April decision to get more feedback from residents about their voting method preference.
Elsewhere in the Wasatch Back, at least four other municipalities are considering adopting ranked choice voting: Park City, Hideout, Oakley and Coalville.
A pilot program for cities and towns to try the system expires in 2026, although state lawmakers are considering a bill that would extend it another ten years.
