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Editor’s Note: Alec Hughes is a former Daily staffer. Hughes did not contribute to the reporting of this article.
Democrats for Ann Arbor launched a campaign to oppose Proposition C, a ballot proposal that aims to remove primary elections and partisan affiliation on local ballots, according to a Sept. 5 press release.
The proposal was written following historically low voter turnout in the Ann Arbor August primary and is meant to increase the number of participating voters by relying solely on the votes from the higher-attended November election. John Godfrey, lead organizer of the proposal and spokesperson for Coalition for Ann Arbor’s Future, told The Michigan Daily he is in favor of the proposal because he believes it will uplift student voices.
“A lot of Ann Arbor is out of town in early August,” Godfrey said. “People are not here or not paying attention. … Student support for these proposals in November will really fundamentally change the ability of students to really take an active, meaningful role in the life of the city where they’re living and studying.”
In an interview with The Daily, Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor said he supported maintaining August primary elections. Taylor said these primaries provide the opportunity for candidates to campaign by meeting with Ann Arbor residents face-to-face.
“It gives us the opportunity to hone in on meeting candidates, on knocking on doors at a time where the attention can be focused on local matters,” Taylor said. “The focus of the primary enables voters to understand who their candidates are, and I think we see the fruits of it now.”
Godfrey said he thinks Ann Arbor should also implement nonpartisan elections, similar to other Michigan municipalities, to incentivize voters to learn more about each candidate.
“Most American cities have nonpartisan elections,” Godfrey said. “This means if you’re running for office in a nonpartisan election, you don’t have a label. You can’t just say ‘Vote for me because I’m a Democrat’ or ‘Vote for me because I’m a Republican’. You have to explain what it is you actually want to do and what you believe in. You have to connect with your constituents more, and it forces greater transparency and not reliance on a simple label.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA senior Alec Hughes, co-president of College Democrats at the University of Michigan, said the organization believes the proposal should incorporate another level of structure to ensure it is meeting its goal of uplifting the voices of Ann Arbor residents.
“The main argument that’s been in favor of (Proposal C) is that nonpartisan elections are how things are run in most municipalities around Michigan,” Hughes said. “While that’s true, usually there’s also something in place to ensure people’s voices are being heard properly, whether it’s ranked choice voting (or) a nonpartisan blanket primary.”
Hughes said as much as he would like for voters to be thoroughly informed, he believes candidates’ party affiliation can go a long way for those who may not closely follow politics.
“We don’t want people to be able to run in this election and misrepresent or misdirect from their true values in order to get elected to office,” Hughes said. “We want people who are running for office to present themselves truthfully. While we want voters to elect people based on proper research, due diligence and assessment of their values and their experience, we still do have to pay attention to the fact that these party labels can also be helpful to a lot of voters.”
The Huron Valley Area Labor Federation, an organization which aims to improve the lives of the working class through economic and social justice, said in an Aug. 15 press release they believe Proposal C would harm working-class individuals and families in Washtenaw County. HVALF President Ian Robinson told The Daily he is concerned about the consequences of eliminating candidates’ party affiliation for low-information voters.
“It’s dangerous to eliminate parties, because at least if there’s a party structure and the party means something,” Robinson said. “There are some boundaries to what you can believe in, fight for and do if you’re going to stay in the Democratic Party. For low-information voters, like I was, and like most of us are, certainly most students are, it helps at least to have the party label to go by.”
Robinson suggested using slates, which are committees of candidates who unite to accomplish and fund campaign activities, as an alternative solution to removing candidates’ party affiliation on ballots.
“If you don’t like intense disagreement on city council, probably the best way to solve it is by having the rival slates that have a consensus on the different views within the slate, and let the people of Ann Arbor put one of those slates in power,” Robinson said. “By their very nature, they will agree because that’s why they formed a slate in the first place, and you won’t see a whole lot of conflict on city council. I don’t think non-partisanship is a way of solving the problem of conflict, and I don’t think parties are creating unnecessary conflict.”
Hughes said he believed the ballot proposal would increase vote-splitting in elections. Vote-splitting happens when a majority of like-minded voters split their votes among multiple candidates with similar views, allowing candidates with fewer votes to win an election.
“While primaries definitely do have lower turnout than general elections, they also prevent the problem of vote splitting on one end, and as a consequence of that, people getting elected to office with a very small plurality of the vote,” Hughes said.
Robinson said he believes the Washtenaw County wards should be redrawn in order to better uplift student voices, as they currently split student votes to a degree that prevents them from holding any real weight in any one ward. Currently, student votes are split among five wards, which some view as limiting students from being elected or having student voices represented on the council.
Robinson said redrawing the wards to put the majority of student votes in one ward would be an effective alternative for increasing the impact of student voices and empowering students to vote, rather than removing the August primary elections altogether.
“Back in the ’60s when students were organizing around so many different issues; something got them fired up about city council, and they decided to elect one or two representatives to city council, and succeeded,” Robinson said. “Back then, the way the wards were drawn gave students a big share of the votes in one or two of the wards. The reaction to that was to redraw the boundaries so that student votes would be fragmented and they wouldn’t be anything close to a majority in any of the wards.”
Daily Staff Reporter Delilah Dakis can be reached at delilahd@umich.edu.
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