On Thursday Park City Councilmember Bill Ciraco said he made a “mistake” last month when he voted to switch to ranked choice voting for the 2025 election.
“Over the past few weeks I’ve done an additional amount of research and some new material has come to light where there’s some concerns with voting tabulation software that is the only tabulation software that’s used here in Utah,” Ciraco said.
He asked if a majority of the council would consider revisiting their decision to use ranked choice voting.
Councilmember Jeremy Rubell, who missed the March council vote to adopt ranked choice voting, said he was open to looking at the new information at a special meeting.
Ed Parigian, the only council member to vote against ranked choice voting, also supported revisiting the decision. A week before the official vote, the council expressed unanimous support for ranked choice voting.
Councilmember Ryan Dickey, who has been an advocate for ranked choice voting, was absent Thursday. Ciraco’s suggestion to move back to conventional voting comes two days after Dickey announced a run for mayor in this year’s election.
Along with mayor, Parkites are set to elect two city council members this year.
Councilmember Tana Toly, who plans to seek reelection, was not supportive of reconsidering ranked choice voting and said she was surprised by the suggestion.
“We’re basically now saying to the public, if you want to run for something you need to decide here in the next month, when we told people we would give them until August,” Toly said. “I think this is just bad form.”
Ranked choice voting eliminates the need for a primary election, which pushes the election filing deadline to August rather than June. Ranked choice voting is an alternative voting method that lets voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots.
Park City Attorney Margaret Plane asked if the council wanted experts on the voting tabulation software present at the special meeting Monday. Ciraco, Rubell and Parigian declined. Along with Toly, Rubell is up for reelection this year, but has not said if he plans to seek another term.
According to an email shared with KPCW, Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson sent a letter to the council on April 14 encouraging them to reverse their move to ranked choice voting, ahead of the state deadline on May 1.
Davidson, who has a history of questioning election integrity, specifically cited issues with Utah's ranked choice voting tabulation software, called RCTab.
Davidson, a Republican, is being investigated by the Utah County Attorney’s Office after he publicly revealed the voting methods of state lawmakers last year, according to the Utah News Dispatch. The Deseret News also reported a Utah County Commissioner openly called for Davidson to recuse himself after the clerk said Lt. Gov. Deirdre Henderson, who manages elections statewide, should be “punished” for election fraud.
Rosemary Blizzard, the executive director of the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center, sent a letter to council members after Thursday’s meeting calling Davidson’s claims “false.”
A report from the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center did identify discrepancies when conducting research on RCTab software with ranked choice voting election results in Alaska. The numbers were compared to those tabulated by the Dominion election management system the state uses. Blizzard’s letter said the center believes the differences in the results were due to changed tabulation settings that led to inaccuracies.
Blizzard said they are confident that the RCTab software produces correct results. She said the group is “disappointed” that Davidson “has opted to undermine trust” in ranked choice voting.
Summit County Clerk Eve Furse, whose office calculates Park City’s election results, expressed confidence in the RCTab software. Furse said it’s undergone a rigorous approval process at the state and federal level.
Park City resident Katie Wright, the former executive director of Better Boundaries that led an anti-gerrymandering lawsuit in Utah, condemned the council’s decision in a Friday email shared with KPCW.
Wright wrote that Davidson “has a terrible reputation among anyone who works on election integrity” and said the council should “stand vigilant against misinformation.”
A Utah Valley University study analyzing the use of ranked choice voting in Utah found that a majority of voters like using the voting method. The study concluded that roughly the same number of Utah voters prefer conventional single-vote plurality as those that prefer ranked choice. It also says that over 80% of Utah voters are confident that their votes are counted accurately under ranked choice voting.
Former Heber City Mayor Kelleen Potter is the executive director for an organization that advocates for ranked choice voting in Utah.
“A lot of this has been influenced by politics,” Potter said. “Not necessarily what has happened in the elections here in Utah – whether the voters liked it, whether they’ve gone well. It’s been something that has become a political thing.”
In 2018 Utah legislators passed a bill allowing cities to pilot ranked choice voting through January 2026. A bill to extend the pilot program was not adopted during the legislative session that ended earlier in March.
The Park City Council plans to have the ranked choice voting special meeting Monday at 4 p.m. at City Hall. There will be a public hearing before a final decision.
Link to attend the meeting virtually.
Park City Municipal is a financial supporter of KPCW
