Heber has used ranked choice voting in two elections. In 2021, four candidates ran for two seats on the city council. In 2023, 11 candidates ran for three seats.
Now, councilmembers will decide whether to keep the system for the 2025 election, when the mayor and two councilmembers will be on the ballot.
Ahead of Tuesday’s discussion and decision, city leaders say they want to hear from residents about the voting method. Heber spokesperson Ryan Bunnell said residents can email the city council at citycouncil@heberut.gov, including their address to verify they are city voters.
The city mailed out fliers last week about emailing feedback to the city council with a link to information about ranked choice voting.
Mayor Heidi Franco told KPCW that neither she nor city councilmembers signed off on the mailers or the information posted to the city website. But Bunnell said the fliers were in response to the council’s directive last month to educate voters about ranked choice voting and gather more feedback about what residents prefer. He said reaching out by mail ensured everyone would have the opportunity to weigh in and the city was “fiscally responsible” with the printing costs.
And he said the city website has long had information about ranked choice voting. Now it has been consolidated to one page with an added explainer video.
During the city council’s first discussion about ranked choice voting, on March 4, city recorder Trina Cooke told leaders the system saves Heber about 50% of the cost of running a primary, then a general election.
“The feedback that I have received has been positive,” she said. “I find that the better understanding you have of the process, the more support you have for the ranked choice voting ballot.”
Of the emails sent to the council so far, Franco said she’s seen about 160 messages from Heber voters, about 120 of which are opposed to ranked choice voting.
Residents have also taken to social media to share views on the voting method – including Franco, who’s against ranked choice ballots.
She published two blog posts on her personal website, “The Mayor’s Report,” one calling on citizens to “VOTE NO” and analyzing the results of the 2023 election.
Franco writes that ranked choice voting “forces you to vote through all rounds… or your ballot is NOT COUNTED.” She also says the majority of ballots in 2023 were thrown out, writing, “Is this the point of RCV – to sadly discourage voters from voting and eliminate their ballots?”
Neither statement is accurate.
The mayor points to results from the first round of vote counting, in which roughly 2,900 people voted for their first choice for city council. About 90 others cast “overvotes,” meaning they ranked more than one candidate as No. 1, and around 70 people cast “undervotes” and didn’t rank anyone first.
Legally, voters can’t rank multiple candidates with the same number just like voters can’t choose two candidates for the same race on a conventional ballot.
In that case, the rest of the ballot’s valid selections are tallied. It doesn’t mean the whole ballot is thrown out.
Under Utah law, ballots are counted for as many candidates as a voter chooses to rank.
About half of Heber voters ranked only their top five out of the 11 candidates who ran for city council in 2023 and those tallies were counted.
In another blog post, Franco asked citizens to oppose ranked choice voting in a survey on an anonymous website called Heber Vote.
The page’s web developer declined to tell KPCW who was running the survey, and KPCW’s email to the group requesting more information was not returned Monday.
The Heber City Council decision Tuesday comes on the heels of two other Wasatch Back towns discussing whether to use the method: Park City opted to try ranked choice voting at a meeting in March, and Hideout chose not to use the system at its meeting Thursday, April 10.
The lieutenant governor’s office requires municipalities to decide how they’ll run their elections by May 1.
For the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting, as well as a link to attend online, visit the city website.
