Council working on updating city election rules
By Mike Steely
Senior Writer
steelym@knoxfocus.com
The Knoxville City Council may soon begin voting on changing future city elections to comply with a new state law.
Until now, voters chose their district candidates in a primary and the top two vote getters went on to a city-wide election. A state law changed that by requiring the city to elect council members by district only with no city-wide runoff.
District 5 Councilman Charles Thomas, in a special called meeting Thursday evening, said his district’s election should be held at the same time as the other districts. As it stands now, his district is grouped with the three at-large seats and city mayor on the ballot. Districts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 are on another election cycle.
The council will consider three different proposals as to how to comply with the new state law and also keep the local elections as similar as the balloting has been for the past 55 years.
Vice Mayor Tommy Smith chaired the work session and city council attorneys Charles Swanson and Rob Frost explained the new state law and the existing city election system and took several questions from the six council members present.
Changing the local election rules takes two votes by city council and the referendum would need to be presented to the election commission 60 days before the November 5 presidential and federal/state election.
There was some discussion in the work session about how a tie in a council election might be resolved, by the council or a special election. Also questioned was the cost of adding a public referendum to the ballot and how it could be done.
The matter is on Tuesday’s city council agenda with a lot of work still to be done to choose what the language on the ballot would be and how any proposal would adhere to the new state law. Several council members raised their frustration over the state legislature reaching into Knoxville to change its longstanding election procedure.
