The Hideout Town Council is considering whether the town should change how it runs its elections in time for this November’s municipal races, when residents will vote for a mayor and two councilmembers.
It joins a growing group of Wasatch Back municipalities who’ve made the switch or are considering doing so. In Summit County, Oakley and Park City are both thinking about adopting ranked choice voting, and in Wasatch County, Heber has used the system for two elections so far.
Kelleen Potter is the executive director of Utah Ranked Choice Voting and the former mayor of Heber City. She told the Hideout council Thursday, Feb. 13, it’s an efficient and cost-effective way to run elections, especially for small towns.
“You can eliminate the primary election,” she said. “I know in Heber, sometimes we would have an entire primary election to eliminate one mayoral candidate or one council candidate because we didn’t have that many candidates. It allows you to predict your budgeting, so you don’t have to say, well, we might have a primary and we might not.”
Potter said it also encourages voters to be informed about all the candidates and worry less about “wasting” votes on candidates who might not win. And she says it promotes more civility in elections.
“It almost trains us to think differently,” she said. “We get to say, gosh, I really like my friend for mayor. But if they don’t win, I have to look at the other candidates and say, well, who else supports parks and trails? Who else supports better public safety?”
On election night, if no candidate has the majority of votes, there’s an automatic runoff. That means the lowest vote-getter is eliminated, and all those ballots are then redistributed to the candidates those voters ranked second.
That process repeats until someone crosses the threshold to win.
Hideout town councilmember Ralph Severini said he wasn’t sure about using the method, since relatively few places in Utah have tried it.
And Councilmember Carol Haselton said she thought it made most sense to use ranked choice voting if residents could take their time.
“I know the current legislature right now is looking at possibly stopping mail-in ballots,” she said. “And I like the fact that I have a ballot in my house and I can look at it and determine who I want to vote for. If you have to go to a voting booth, it’s going to take a whole lot longer, I would think, to try to do ranked choice voting.”
Councilmember Chris Baier said switching to ranked ballots could make sense as Hideout grows. She said the town has never held a primary election.
“As we grow in Hideout, we should be expecting, hoping, that more people who live here are now eligible and willing to run for office,” she said. “This June, there’ll be two council seats and the mayor up for election, so it’s possible we could get a large number of interested parties.”
The deadline for Hideout to decide which system to use is May 1. The town council will make its choice in April and notify the county clerk and the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.
The Utah legislature approved a pilot program in 2018 to allow Utah cities and counties to try ranked choice voting.
