Voters in Shelby County have decided 52 referendums in the last decade of elections, from wine sales in food stores to the formation of suburban school systems to amendments to the Tennessee Constitution.

The total goes to 55 with the Nov. 6 ballot that includes three proposed amendments to the city charter that would:

• Repeal the use of instant-runoff or ranked-choice voting in races for the seven single-member district City Council seats – the only offices the runoff provision in the city charter applies to.
• Abolish the provision in the city charter that requires a separate runoff election in those seven single-members districts when no candidate gets a majority of the votes cast.
• And extend the current limit of two consecutive terms in office for City Council members and the Memphis mayor to three consecutive terms effective immediately. That means three current council members now serving their second term could seek a third term in the October 2019 city elections.

Instant-runoff voting (IRV) and the limit of two consecutive terms in office were approved by voters in 2008.

Two competiting organizations — Save IRV and Yes 2 Repeal – have turned the debate over IRV into blanket appeals, asking Memphis voters to either vote yes on all three questions or vote no on all three. Yes 2 Repeal is being funded by the Diversity Memphis political action committee.

“In all of these instances, the City Council is trying to undo the will of the voters before either election reform has had a chance to take effect,” former Shelby County commissioner and University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law professor Steve Mulroy said on the WKNO/Channel 10 program “Behind The Headlines.”

“This is clearly incumbency protection,” he said. “This is all a part of the package designed to make it easier for City Council incumbents to stay in power longer.”

City Council member Martavius Jones voted along with a majority on the council to put all three questions on the Nov. 6 ballot. Jones is serving his first term on the council.

He said two terms is not enough to learn how to be an effective representative.

“This measure does not eliminate term limits,” Jones said on the TV program hosted by Eric Barnes, president and executive editor of The Daily Memphian. “From a budgeting standpoint, I’m on top of things. But planning and zoning and public works and fire, with the responsibility of a full-time job – in almost three years I still have not gotten a handle on that.”

Mulroy disagrees.

“My own experience is I was able to master what needed to be done in the time,” he said of his two terms on the County Commission. “I don’t think it’s unmanageable. If we do say that that’s the case, then are we saying that votes cast in their first or second term aren’t quite valid – that they’re not really up to the task – that they are making important decisions about city policy without actually being qualified.”

Jones defended council members putting questions on the ballot that affect their future on the council.

“The ultimate decision will be made by the voters,” he said. “It’s not a unilateral decision made by the City Council.”

“It makes me uncomfortable,” Mulroy countered. “There was no public outcry to change from two terms to three terms. There was no public outcry to repeal instant-runoff voting. All of them have a potential conflict of interest in that they are all ways of making it easier for City Council incumbents to stay in power longer.”

“Behind The Headlines” airs Friday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 8:30 a.m. on WKNO-TV.

Of the 52 referendums on Shelby County ballots in the last decade, 45 have been approved by voters and seven defeated.

Shelby County commissioners on the August 2008 ballot attempted to increase the limit of two consecutive terms to three terms for the mayor and county commissioners, and extend the term limits to the Shelby County sheriff, trustee, register, assessor and county clerk, but those charter changes failed.

Commissioners put the failed charter changes back on the ballot that November and changed the term limits question to two consecutive terms for the mayor and commission and the five countywide officials. It was approved by voters.

Jones sees increasing city term limits as a way of acknowledging that the job of a City Council member has become a de facto full-time job, even though it is a part-time job by pay and charter provisions.

“In many respects it’s not a part-time job anymore,” he said. “Each body has delegated some of the authority that used to rest with elected bodies to outside independent boards and commissions.”

Mulroy agrees, but for different reasons.

“I certainly see some merit in converting it to a full-time job,” he said. “But also for the other reason that it would level the playing field so that people who are of more limited means might still be able to afford to devote the time necessary.”

There is much less common ground when it comes to the proposed repeal of instant-runoff voting – a ranking of candidates by voters. 

The city charter currently requires a runoff election in the seven single-member district races if no candidate gets a majority – 50 percent plus one – of the votes cast. IRV would allow voters to rank candidates and would take the second and third preferences of voters and distribute them among the leading contenders until someone in the race has a majority of the votes.

The distribution of those ranked votes after the first vote count would extend election day over several days, but would eliminate the need for a separate runoff election.

“We have had issues with this election commission year after year after year, even before I got into politics, even before I held political office,” Jones said. “How do we think that this election commission can adequately and accurately account for this system when we can’t get that with the regular system that we have now in place?”

Mulroy said a delay of several days in the vote count is still shorter than waiting several weeks for a runoff election.

“If you are concerned about election integrity, then you ought to be for instant-runoff voting for this reason,” he said. “Right now the chief problem with our election integrity is that we are trusting the computers because we don’t have a voter-verified paper trail.”

Jones considered proposing a fourth ballot question that would have made the City Court Clerk’s office part of the city treasurer’s office and eliminated the position of clerk as an elected position.

He withdrew that referendum ordinance before any vote by the council, noting that there were already three questions on the ballot.