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Tuesday's elections for four seats on the Oklahoma City Council attracted a slew of candidates. How nice it would be if they attracted a slew of voters, too.
Unfortunately, the latter is unlikely.
Municipal elections traditionally generate very low voter turnout. In the February 2018 primary election for Oklahoma City mayor, for example, David Holt won office by beating two other candidates — and just 8.4 percent of the city's registered voters cast a ballot.
Turnout is generally much lower than that for city council races. A notable exception occurred in November when 23,545 people voted in a special runoff between Nikki Nice and Kirk Pankratz for the Ward 7 seat. Turnout was 54.3 percent.
The difference was that the election was held the same day Oklahomans were deciding races for governor, the Legislature, Congress and many others. The turnout bolsters the argument by those who have sought to move municipal elections from late winter and early spring to Election Day.
Others, such as 2018 Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Chris Powell, advocate for “ranked-choice” voting, where voters mark their ballots not just for their first choice in each race, but for their second, third, etc. If a candidate fails to get a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots have the secondchoice votes tallied and added to the total. The process continues until a candidate gets a majority and becomes the winner.
As Powell wrote in The Oklahoman in December, “A process that would combine the runoff with the primary, save taxpayer dollars, be more convenient for voters and eliminate the effects of lower turnout would be an obvious improvement.”
For now, Oklahoma City uses a primary-runoff system. In races with more than two candidates, if no one receives 50 percent plus one vote in the primary, a runoff is held with the top two vote-getters.
The council races on the ballot Tuesday are for Wards 2, 5, 6 and 8. Two will be decided Tuesday — in Wards 5 and 8, where incumbents David Greenwell and Mark Stonecipher, respectively, each face one challenger.
The Oklahoman endorses Greenwell, who's seeking a third term, and Stonecipher, who's seeking his second term. Both have been outstanding members of the council and merit re-election.
Three people are running for the Ward 6 seat held by Meg Salyer, who is retiring. In Ward 2, where Councilman Ed Shadid is retiring, five people are vying for the seat. The Oklahoman makes no recommendation in either of those races.
We will recommend, however, that voters in all four of these wards exercise their most important civic duty and vote. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.