Jacksonville examines a ward-specific vote system for city council

A push is underway in Jacksonville to change how residents in the Central Arkansas city elect their City Council members.

Like many cities across the state, Jacksonville (population about 29,000) has a City Council whose members are voted in through city-wide elections, with each of the 10 members representing one of the city’s five wards.

But while City Council members each represent and have to live in a ward, they are not elected based on their wards. Critics of the current format argue that the current system reduces the influence of voters in the individual wards, especially residents of the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

Now Jacksonville voters could soon be asked whether they want to change how the City Council is elected, with one City Council member proposing to put the question to the voters next year.

Under state law, cities by default have city council members voted in through at-large elections. However, municipalities have the option to make changes, where only residents of a specific ward can vote for their city council member.

City Council member Trenika McCoy, who represents Ward 2 on the eastern part of the city, is proposing to put the question to the voters by introducing an ordinance that would allow voters to decide during an election next year.

McCoy is proposing a “hybrid” system similar to the model in Little Rock, where some members of the City Council would be elected only by the residents of their ward, while others would be elected in a city-wide election.

The Ward 2 City Council member originally proposed implementing the city council election system change as an ordinance, but after the proposal failed to pass during an Aug. 7 meeting, she instead proposed putting the question to the voters.

“There have been several candidates who won their ward, but lost because of at-large voting in this town,” McCoy said. “They didn’t get to have that vote, their voices were not heard. They became muffled.”

The move to hybrid representation is supported by the Jacksonville branch of the NAACP, whose president, Reginald Ford, asserted that an at-large system “is just a popularity contest among wealthy people in the city.”

Ford said the city’s power brokers support the current system, as allowing members of the City Council to run in city-wide elections dilutes the power of people from the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

“And (City Council members) stay in these seats as long as they so desire,” Ford said. “That’s why Jacksonville (doesn’t) grow, because we got the same recycled people in the same seats.”

Mayor Jeff Elmore pushed back against the contention that the city’s current system for electing representatives stifles growth.

Elmore, who doesn’t vote on ordinances unless there’s a tie, said he is neutral when it comes to whether Jacksonville should keep its all at-large-elected City Council or move to a hybrid system, and that the question should be put to the voters to ultimately decide, instead of being decided through an ordinance passed by the City Council.

“It would have been a conflict of interest for the City Council to make that change themselves because, depending on who you are or where you serve, it could be advantageous to you one way or another,” Elmore said. “I think it needs to be something done by the people to make that determination.”

Megan Bailey, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which also backs the shift to a hybrid system, wrote in an email, “At-large voting often dilutes the political power of communities of color and other underrepresented groups, denying voters a fair voice in their own governance.

“By contrast, single-member district systems can be drawn to ensure all voters — regardless of race or ethnicity — have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” Bailey said. “When at-large voting is used to prevent fair representation, it violates both the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution, undermining the promise of equal participation in our democracy.”

City Council member Reedie Ray, who represents Ward 3, said he opposes the change to a hybrid city council system, although he does support putting the question to Jacksonville voters so they can ultimately decide.

“That’s what got me here, so I’m going to stick with what got me here,” Ray said.

By being elected in city-wide elections, he continued, City Council members can consider what’s best for Jacksonville as a whole, not just their ward.

“If I got a pothole in the upper-income part of the city and I got a pothole in the lower-income part of the city, both of them got to be addressed,” Ray said.

McCoy’s proposal is sparked by a new state law, Act 283, that requires cities to update the local county clerk on how they want their election conducted by Aug. 31. The law, sponsored by Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, aims to allay confusion about which cities in Arkansas elect their city councils in at-large elections and which do it by ward.

The legislation came at the behest of the State Board of Election Commissioners, after confusion with municipal elections in Phillips and Ouachita.

Chris Madison, director of the State Board of Election Commissioners, said the law is about ensuring county clerks have paperwork when election time comes, to ensure they know which municipalities in their county wanted their city council voted in by ward and which by at-large elections.