Rob Austrian’s guest opinion “Reform Boulder City Council election rules” (Daily Camera, Nov. 30) argued that the present at-large system marginalizes students living on University Hill, as well as an unknown number of other underrepresented minority groups living in geographic clusters throughout Boulder.

We question whether electing council members by district would have the outcome the writer desires. At least two current council members live in the University Hill neighborhood. Furthermore, under the present system, students can try to get one of their own elected by urging the electorate to vote for just their preferred candidate — “bullet” voting — rather than for the number of candidates equal to the number of open seats.

Might Boulder voters consider an alternative voting method? Two have precedents in Boulder. Approval voting is used at CU Boulder for student government elections; multi-seat elections would use proportional approval voting. Another method, single-transferable vote or STV (basically, instant-runoff voting for multi-seat elections), was what voters used for Boulder City Council elections from 1917 to 1947.

In approval voting, the voter chooses all candidates s/he approves of, no matter how many open seats there are. In STV, the voter ranks the candidates first, second, third, etc., up to the number of open seats. Both methods are more expressive of voters’ wishes than our current plurality voting method. To learn how the votes are tallied under these methods, visit our webpage http://lwvbc.org/vmcomm.html.

Under Colorado state law, Colorado cities can use a ranked-choice method, such as STV, for their elections. Approval voting, however, is not yet allowed. But state Rep. Jonathan Singer (House District 11 – Longmont) has introduced legislation, supported by the League of Women Voters, to allow cities to use approval voting.

We encourage you to join our team and learn more about alternative voting methods.

Deborah Hayes

Voting Methods Team

League of Women Voters of Boulder County