Ranked choice voting kickstarted controversy in Park City, Heber and Hideout before their municipal election seasons.
But in Oakley and Coalville, the other Wasatch Back towns considering the alternative voting method, the city councils didn’t decide to vote on it one way or another.
The state set a May 1 deadline for cities and towns to decide whether to use ranked choice voting, or RCV, for their November 2025 elections.
Oakley Mayor Zane Woolstenhulme said there was interest among councilmembers after former Heber Mayor Kelleen Potter, executive director of Utah Ranked Choice Voting, presented information on RCV in January.
“Maybe not unanimous, but I think had the legislature acted to make that a permanent option for us, it very well may have passed in Oakley,” Woolstenhulme said.
Ranked choice voting lets voters rank their preferred candidates, so that if nobody wins enough votes, there’s an automatic runoff.
What that means is the lowest vote-getter is eliminated. All of those ballots are then redistributed to the candidates they ranked second. The process repeats until someone crosses the threshold needed to win.
Counties and cities can decide the threshold, whether that’s 50% of votes, more or less.
In 2018 Utah legislators passed a bill allowing cities to try ranked choice voting through a pilot program. A bill to extend the pilot failed during the 2025 General Session, so it’s set to expire after this November’s election.
In Coalville, Mayor Mark Marsh said there was a lack of interest. Summit County Clerk Eve Furse presented information to the city council there back in February.
“I've asked questions about it with a couple of people and just not sure if it's really anything that makes a huge difference,” Marsh said. “And people, I think, are good with tradition. I think they like the traditional way.”
Marsh said he hasn’t decided if he’ll run for reelection yet; Woolstenhulme thinks he’ll run for reelection in Oakley. The filing period for city council and mayoral races opens up in the summer.
Both men also told KPCW they had not been contacted by Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson about ranked choice voting.
Davidson has recently circulated information to some Wasatch Back cities encouraging them not to switch to RCV due to alleged problems with Utah's RCTab ballot tabulation software. The clerk, who has a history of questioning election integrity, has claimed the software produced erroneous results in one Alaska election.
Rosemary Blizzard, executive director of the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center has called Davidson’s claims “false.” She said the errors were tied to an inaccurate tabulation machine setting and said the center believes RCTab produces correct results.
Furse agrees and said RCTab has been rigorously tested and approved at the state and federal level.
Since Oakley and Coalville won’t use ranked choice voting this year, no town in the Wasatch Back is.
Heber previously used it but voted not to this year. Park City initially decided to use RCV, but the council reversed its vote at a special meeting April 28, a few days before the deadline.
