The resolution on Ranked Choice Voting split the Commission evenly, with 5 commissioners voting yes and 5 voting no. Mayor Kelly Girtz then voted in favor of the resolution, breaking the tie.
Ranked Choice Voting, or RCV, allows voters to order candidates based on preference. Supporters of RCV, including Girtz, suggest that it eliminates the need for runoff elections. Mayor Girtz:
“As it’s been noted in prior comments, the process of runoff elections both diminish democracy and cost a lot of money, so anything that we can do that enhances democracy and costs less money is a good thing.”
RCV has many critics at the state level, however. During the 2024 legislative session, Republican senators introduced a bill aiming to ban the use of RCV. Lt Governor Burt Jones, a supporter of the bill, stated in January that RCV is “designed to cause confusion and fatigue among voters.” The bill failed in January, however.
The Athens-Clarke County Commission received a memo about RCV’s potential impact on the county shortly before the meeting from local government staff. The memo said that between 2020 and 2024, the county spent over $500,000 on runoff elections. It also contained anonymous statements from local Board of Elections and Voter Registration members, some of whom expressed reservations about the resolution.
The memo’s contents seemed to convince some members of the Commission to vote no, including Dexter Fisher of District 5:
“The Board of Education has not had an opportunity to even look at this. One of the Board of Education members said “Why pass something when we have not had the opportunity to look at it, to study it, to see if this fits our community?’”
One resident of the East side stood up during public comment to express their support for the resolution.