“Maine Supreme Court Says Ranked Choice Voting is Unconstitutional,” said the headline over an online “Electoral Reform” piece by Shawn Griffiths.

Ah yes, ranked choice voting. I remember it well. A plan that was pushed and pushed and pushed by some local folks who made all sorts of claims that never ended up being tested in the real world of Davis city politics.

Maine, of course, is not Davis. And Davis is not governed in any way, shape or form by the justices seated on the Maine Supreme Court.

The Davis plan had merits and demerits, supporters and detractors. But ultimately, it remained unclear why this would be a better system than the one already in place that had given us folks like Dave Rosenberg, Maynard Skinner, Bob Black, Jerry Adler, Lois Wolk, Dan Wolk, Sandy Motley, Norm Woodbury, Kathleen Green, Sheryl Freeman, Harry Whitcombe, Ed Roessler, Vern Hickey, Ernie Hartz and John McMurdie.

Or Kent Gill, Ralph Aaronson, Debbie Nichols-Poulos, Joan Poulos, Mike Corbett, Jim Stevens, Don Saylor, Mike Harrington, Ted Puntillo, Steve Souza, Joe Krovoza, Jerry Kaneko, Ann Evans, Clyde Jacobs and Harry Miller.

Not to leave out Lamar Heystek, Susie Boyd, Ruth Asmundson, Vigfus Asmundson, Tom Tomasi, Sue Greenwald, Ken Wagstaff, Bill Kopper, Rich Weinstock, Richard Farrell, Dick Holdstock, Stan Forbes, Julie Partansky and our current Fearsome Fivesome.

It’s impossible to know if that cast of characters would have been different had choice voting been instituted at some point along the way, but I suspect we’d have survived no matter what.

Under our current system, every two years there are either two seats or three seats up for grabs on our five-member City Council. The top vote-getter in each election eventually gets to be mayor, thus there is no direct election for the right to wield the gavel at council meetings, sever ribbons at grand openings and kiss babies at Community Park on the Fourth of July.

People are free to vote for one candidate or two or three, depending on how many seats are available. If three seats are open, you can still “bullet vote” for only one if that’s your preference.

Officially, we never have candidates running as a “ticket” in Davis City Council elections. Even unofficially, we rarely see a ticket, though occasionally it did seem as if we had clones on the ballot.

“The Maine Supreme Court released its advisory opinion on the constitutionality of ranked choice voting,” the story goes on. “On the question of whether or not the alternative voting method violates the plurality clause in the Maine Constitution, the justices ruled in the affirmative.”

And, since ranked choice voting had been adopted through statute rather than a constitutional amendment, the constitution wins.

“Maine state law currently says that candidates only need to get a plurality of the vote to win an election. The justices ruled that since ranked choice voting requires plurality winners to go through additional runoffs in the election, the alternative voting method is in conflict with the language of the Maine Constitution.”

Supporters of choice voting in Davis argued that it would somehow be more democratic and open up the possibility of lesser-known and lesser-funded candidates actually gaining seats on the council.

Maybe yes, maybe no. But, as Julie Partansky dramatically proved, you can run a shoestring campaign, work your tail off, charm the voters and win in a landslide without spending oodles of money.

If the goal is to support those lesser-known and lesser-funded candidates, it seems that district elections are a much better option, given that historically underrepresented areas of town would at long last have their own representative.

I used to be in favor of district elections for Davis, given that it’s a system in place for electing both houses of the California Legislature and all members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Even members of the U.S. Senate are technically elected by district, even if those districts are not nearly equal in population.

The more I think about it, however, the more I prefer to keep the system we have, not because it’s flawless, but because every citizen of Davis gets to have a say on every candidate running for council.

Under district elections, you’ll have a hand in selecting just one member of the council and no say at all in who the other four turn out to be.

That’s way too much control for most of us to give up.

— Reach Bob Dunning at [email protected]