Economic Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

I call this meeting to order of the Rules and City Government Committee today, July 23rd, 2026, 1213 p.m. We're going to start our agenda with a roll call. Is Alderman Brooks-Shandemeyer present?

Here on the screen.

Thank you very much. Is Alderman Frank Thorpe present?

Present.

Awesome. And then myself, Chair Alderman Smith-Brown. We will move forward with the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve of the agenda?

So moved.

All right. There is a second from that two motions. Thank you. With no objection, we will move forward on that. All right, we have the approval of the minutes from our last two meetings. We have the June 4th, 2026 regular meeting minutes, and we have the July 9th, 2026 special joint meeting minutes. We can maybe make a motion to pass both of these or move forward on both of these. Yes, Alderman Shannon Meyer.

Uh, so I cannot make any a vote on the joint meeting since I was not there.

So, yes, let's move to the 1st, then. Do you mind making a motion to the 1st, June 4th, 2026 meeting?

So moved.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. If there's no objection, we'll move for the second one for the July 9th meeting.

So moved.

All right. Now we'll second that. No objection. The first legislation we have is CA 226, which is 2026, expanding the Board of Supervisors of Elections membership. We appreciate Alderman Savage and myself. We are working together. We have an amendment that will merge both of the piece of legislation that I've been working on as well as that he has been working on. A thank you to Cynthia as well, who's helping us to do so. And so we're gonna ask that this is postponed to our next meetings for us to make an official recommendation, if that is all right with our members. And we will make sure that you all have in hand that amendment as soon as it's done being drafted.

All right, move over to postpone action until the next meeting.

Thank you, is there a second? All right, all in favor?

Aye. Thank you.

The next we have is 0926, which is updating the Standing Committee's section of the City Code. Is there a motion for a favorable recommendation for the legislation? Did we already? Okay, let's look at the amendment. We have three amendments here. The first, I believe we already, Alderman Huntley. The second is from Mayor Litman and the third is from Mayor Litman. Was there any motion on any of these? We already, yeah, what is the status of?

We have not made a motion on any of the amendments, Mr. Chair.

So, it's Amendment 3 that we have to consider. Now, how about on the main legislation? We've already made a favorable... Okay, great. So, Alderman Chen, we're looking at Amendment 3, which is from Alderman... Actually, it's from Mayor Lipman, and it is to... insert that if legislation is referred to more than two standing committees the City Council shall hear the legislation in a committee of the whole in lieu of separate committee meetings. Is there any discussion on that?

So, I guess I would just say Mr chairman that this makes sense because. Once you get 2 committees, you get 6 of us, we get 3 committees, you got 9 of us. So, and we start doubling up and the discussion about the staff work that goes into these meetings and the TV. I think it makes sense. And last week there was a joint committee that I think was very effective. And this makes all the sense in the world from an efficiency and productivity standpoint.

I would agree to that. If there is no other comment, if there are no other comments on this, maybe we could just move forward with a favorable recommendation with this amendment.

So moved.

All right. Is there a second? All in favor? Aye.

Thank you.

So that is a favorable for all amendments as well as the legislation, which we've done a previous meeting. Next we have, oh yes, please.

Do we need a motion for a favorable recommendation for the legislation as amended?

Yeah, let's do it. Go ahead. Do you mind making that motion?

Yeah, I'd like to move that the Rules Committee makes a favorable recommendation to 0926 as amended with all three amendments.

Marvellous. Is there a second for that? Second. Thank you, Alderman Schenemeyer. All in favor? Aye. Okay, the next on the agenda, my God, we have 01426, which is art in public places, amending definitions, duties, and membership. Okay, so with this legislation, we've heard a lot from the arts community. We've had many discussions and we are doing our absolute best to find a resolve. So as we are doing so, I'm gonna ask that Laura within the mayor's office, if you don't mind, if you're available to come up. Yes, thank you for all the work you've been doing are doing and we just ask if you don't mind just maybe giving us. A little bit about who you are for anyone who may not know who you are and the importance of your role and maybe just diving in just a little bit to start with what this legislation is like the purpose of this legislation.

Sure. I'm Laura Richards. I'm the community engagement strategist for the city. I've been working on boards and commissions since I arrived at the city on December 2nd, both trying to understand them first, having been somewhat unfamiliar. And then really, my background is in strategy and systems improvement. And so really looking at them from that approach. The current design of boards and commissions has let it fall a little bit into disrepair, the system itself. It just hasn't been tended. There's not a full-time employee for boards and commissions. um so it's being run with a very small battery and in order to make it work for all the participants we have over 150 city residents that dedicate their time and allocate their time to boards and commissions and so making sure that it works for them and that their contributions are able to be productive is important with AIPPC in particular that was one of the first boards that was brought to our attention as being dysfunctional and they were unable to meet, hadn't met for several months before being disbanded. The thought there was to re-energize the board by making it by making it easier for them to meet and convene, but also by staffing it with commissioners who understood art, not just were involved community members. So we went about creating an interview process that would help us pre-qualify candidates and really get a talented group of people who were passionate about the art, not any one area in particular, to open-mindedly interpret what is the best public art for us to have in our city and make sure that it equitably gets allocated across our city. So I feel like we did a really good job with that process. We had help from April Nyman from the Arts Council of Anne Arundel County, and we had a bunch of really qualified folks who did the interviewing, not city staff or employees. And I would be very excited to see those people empaneled and empowered to really help create the system of fairly evaluating art and allocating these very important funds in the way that best meets the needs of the citizens of Annapolis.

Thank you for that, Laura. And if those who are listening or if anyone in this room did not hear or were not able to understand, we need more residents stepping up to provide their voice if they have the time and availability and ability to be involved in the direction of what's going on in our city. Uh, you know, there's many opportunities for you to do. So there are many commissions and boards as we are restructuring and bettering this process. We're asking and urging you all to step forth. Please provide an application. Um, talk with your older person, any other city representative, and we're going to do our best to include your voice in the decision making process because these boards and commissions are extremely valuable and important for our direction within the city.

Alderman Smith-Brown, do you mind if I address three specific concerns that I've heard from the community that I think are misperceptions and might help people understand this legislation better?

Absolutely. Thank you.

Okay, so one of the feedbacks I've heard is that there's some concern that the arbiter or final say for funding of art projects would lie in the Department of Planning and Zoning. And they believe that this is a change, that this existing legislation indicates a change. there isn't a change. This oversight has been with planning and zoning since the last legislation was passed, which I think was in 2025. The commission really makes the decision of the allocation of funds and which projects are funded. The oversight is there in cases, and I think this legislation says 40,000, in cases where very high-end projects, which has only happened once, I think, in the history of this particular board, where an art project would be over 40,000, and that was at the Westgate Circle. And that was an unfortunate situation there. So I think the oversight, there's a lot of emphasis being placed there because the understanding is that there would be involvement in any project. And it's not structured that way and it wouldn't be implemented in that way. So that's one point of clarity. Another thing that I think we're hearing from the community is we want as much diversity as possible. And we wholeheartedly agree. We want as much diversity as possible, too. Diversity in wards, diversity of, you know, racial backgrounds, of everything, because we want there to be a diversity of art in our community that serves all of our community members. Unfortunately, there's a misperception that by having more members, we have more diversity. And what we've found uniformly across all 24 boards and commissions we currently support is that more seats does not lead to more diversity. It leads to more opportunity for a lack of a quorum. It leads to many boards and commissions having redundant ward representation, a lopsidedness, if you will. the boards and commissions, what we would hope to see is more parity across all wards because there would be a smaller pool and we get fewer applicants from some wards, as well as and an increased ability for us to manage boards and commissions to allow terms that have expired for those folks to move off the board and new folks to move onto the board. This creates diversity, this turnover, so that many people get to sit in those seats. And I would just encourage us to broaden the lens of how we're looking at this because it sounds really good. And just hearing nine seats, more diversity, I would agree with that. But when you look at the stats, it doesn't bear out. And the third thing, there was a third thing there as well. I'm trying to think of what the third thing was, but one and two pretty much are two of the bigger things. Is there another point that you're hearing that you think I need to address?

Non-residents. Oh, yes, please, Alderman Schanemeyer.

Non-residents on the committee.

Non-residents is what he said.

Yes, thank you. Thanks, Shannon. non-residents should not be on the boards or that non-residents, if they are on the board, shouldn't have a vote. And looking at the makeup of our boards and commissions right now, if we remove non-residents, not only would many of these boards not have a quorum, we are removing expertise. There are many boards and commissions where maybe somebody lives in Annapolis Roads, maybe they live in Arundel on the Bay. They're very close to the city, they have interests in the city, and they have valuable expertise that we're not able to find somewhere else. by removing those folks, we lose talent that's willing to contribute their efforts to the city. And so I think it should be looked at very closely if that's our decision. I can tell you just for the interviewed candidates and proposed candidates to reconstitute AIPPC, we have two diverse members which would really benefit the commission and both of them live slightly outside the city. And as our city demographics change and the city becomes more affluent, more expensive for people to live and work here, we do run a risk of sliding into not having as many city residents that that enable this diversity that we're looking, that we're seeking to have in this parity.

Thank you for all of that. And I know we have guests today who may have came to speak on this matter. And I believe at the end, we'll open it up for them to speak, if that's okay with you all. If you all can stay with us, we'll try to get through as soon as we can. Thank you, Laura, for that. And if there's no more questions from our alderman, yes, please.

I would just like to applaud your initiative and the blood, sweat, and tears you're putting into this. It's already paying dividends, so thank you.

So what it sounds like you were saying for the residency piece is maybe broadening to an Anne Arundel County residency, seeing that these people live right outside of the city. I know they would love to be in the city. Maybe we could annex them at some point. That's a joke. Maybe it wasn't a joke. We could figure that out. But if you don't mind, to our city attorney who, my God, is phenomenal, by the way, who could really just give us a little bit from the perspective of the law office and our options that we would have here. If you don't mind just saying transparently.

Sure, thank you very much. Yeah, Tony Cooper Smith, city attorney. One of the issues to consider here is that when we began going down this current path of looking at potential changes to the AIPPC, the council did adopt an uncodified ordinance that created an initial six-month period to look at making these changes. That period is expected to run in August when the council is no longer in session. Given all of the public comments received to date and the various amendments that the that this Rules Committee is considering, it would not be inappropriate to consider an extension of that six-month period to add a few more months as you all can continue to listen to the public, to the comments, and try to consider how you ultimately want to land on any changes, if any, to the AIPPC. So that would be our recommendation. If you feel like you need additional time to propose an extension of that six month period established by 04-26. Okay, thank you.

And from the feedback we've received, if there's no, conversation or discussion on that matter I would ask that we postpone the legislation at hand in its original form which is let me confirm this Oh, 1426. Arts and public places amending definitions duties. And membership alongside the 7 amendments that we have been provided, we would postpone this and urge the council on Monday at our city council meeting to extend. the 04-26 legislation deadline from six months to now September 30th, which is right in the same month of our September 3rd meeting where we can reconsider after August's recess the amendments and update legislation incorporating the feedback and the thoughts of the arts community. Hopefully that made sense for someone else on this committee to make the motion to do. So.

All right, so I will make the motion to postpone action and, uh. We don't really need an official committee recommendation to just say, hey, vote to extend the rules. So suspend the rules. I'll make a motion to postpone action on. Oh, 1426. okay.

Thank you all in Shannon Meyer. Is there a 2nd for that? 2nd, all right all in favor. Aye. Thank you. I take that as an aye. Thanks, Alderman Shannon-Meyer. We now have Forest Conservation, which is 01626, Forest Conservation Program amendments to conform with state law. Thank you, Alderman Savage, for working heavily on this. We are in a time crunch seeing that the county has seeing that the county has provided updates for us to abide by. And so Alderman Savage alongside our other members of the council have worked together to ensure that we are in alignment as well as enforcing more strict laws on this matter. So we have here The remaining amendments that we have not had any movement on, do you mind sharing with us which ones we have and have not moved on? So we've already approved or moved to have a favorable reclamation on 2, 3, 4, and 6. So just 6, not 4. Thank you. So now we are looking at Amendment 4, 5, 5A, 7, 8, 910. See 11 here. Legislation in total. So. Seeing that there is a deadline for this and we will always have the ability to come back if need be to make adjustments. We are trusting that the work that has been done thus far and the feedback that we've provided to Alderman Savage and others that we would move with a favorable recommendation. Though before we do so, is there any concerns or questioning from the law office that you may have on this matter? Or maybe giving us a little background of because I know he worked heavily with you all to ensure that we are in alignment with the state.

Just in general, we did an extensive review of the changes that the General Assembly made to the State Forest Conservation Act. And as you all are aware, the city, as other jurisdictions do, implement the state forest conservation changes at the local level. So we have a local forest conservation ordinance. And that is the intent of this legislation. Alderman Savage does have a number of amendments and I think these should be in general considered to be efforts of his to make sure that the new changes that we would be implementing to be consistent with state law are implemented in a manner that is consistent with the way Annapolis has operated in the past. So I'm happy to address any of the specific amendments if that's helpful, but certainly I've been working closely with Alderman Savage, with the city's forester as well, to try to make sure that we're aware of what the state law changes that were required are and how we can appropriately implement those.

Okay, thank you very much, City Attorney. So if there's no disagreement or opposition on any of these, these are extremely extensive, though a lot of them, I don't believe were, they didn't really, I think he mentioned that they weren't really to, it was more so for informational and alignment purposes. And so, is there a motion from any of the older persons to give either a favorable recommendation or a. No action or no recommendation at all for this to come back to the floor.

On Monday, Mr chair, I just have a quick question on a message for yes. With projects, needing planning commission approval will be appealed directly to the circuit court. Is that the current. Is that the current policy right now or do those projects go to the Board of Appeals? Like, are we changing the process on appealing a decision? Or is this just to make the changes we're making in aligning with the state code aligned with Annapolis? We're not actually changing anything of substance.

Maybe someone from the team, if you don't mind.

Sure. Yeah. So currently under the current code, the appeals from the planning commission do go to the circuit court. So the attempt, the effort here is to keep that process consistent the way that it currently is.

Okay, cool. So I have no objections to any of the amendments, Mr. Chair. So I would like to make a motion to move amendment 455789 and 10 as a block and I would like to make a favorable recommendation to those amendments. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, there we go. The question I had, because let's move forward on that. The question I had, though, is for 5 and 5A, I see there's a little bit of a difference. Which one of these are we, because I know he mentioned that something was supposed to be taken off and added back. Do we know which one of these was the prime focus one? I think 5A. Is it 5A? Okay, so maybe not on 5 we don't make any. okay action all right do you mind maybe we can make um a substitute motion to that uh motion just to take five five out and just focus on 5a is that all right with you all okay great um

11th Amendment.

Oh, okay. All right. So, okay, Alderman Schanmeier, so what I'm taking is a motion for 4, 5A, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Seeing that Amendment 11, we're going to have to come back to after that. So, is there a second to that motion for a favorable recommendation for those following amendments from Alderman Savage?

Second. Um, I think you made the motion I made a motion for 5 and 5 day. So the chair made the motion for friendly.

Okay.

So I will 2nd, that motion.

Thank you have all in favor. All right. Okay, great. So, let's go to amendment 11, which. Has not been included on this. just for purposes of those who may not be able to see, on page five at the end of section 21.71.030B8, add a new paragraph numbered accordingly in the following. For the avoidance of doubt, the exemption under this subsection does not apply to any activity that constitutes or is part of a subdivision, plan development, site plan, or other regulated activity under subsection A.1 of this section. Do you know the intention of this?

Yes, please. Sure, so Alderman Savage was aware that there are a couple of proposed subdivisions that are out there right now where I believe it was suggested by the applicant that they might not have to comply with forest conservation because of an exemption in subsection B8 that's referred to there in this amendment 11 11 and that exemption really only applies to an existing lot of record meaning that if you already had a parcel that was part of a residential subdivision as a part of doing that residential subdivision you would have complied with the forest conservation in the first instance and then if you were gonna build or do something on your lot at that point you know in general assuming you weren't doing further subdividing that lot you would then be you know be exempt from Forest Conservation because it had already been complied with but if you're doing a subdivision in the first instance like these larger developments would be those are not considered an existing lot of record because they are they're going to be subdivided and therefore they need to comply with the Forest Conservation ordinance so the purpose of this it's kind of a belt and suspenders approach it's saying for the avoidance of doubt that if you're doing an activity that constitutes a subdivision plan development, site plan, or other regulated activity, you are subject to the Forest Conservation Ordinance. So it's really, it's a clarification that's being made. I think it's out of an abundance of caution because I think you could currently read the code as being relatively clear on this issue, but I appreciate the intent to try to eliminate any doubt and to be cautious about it.

So this is an instance of accountability still being there for them to have to abide by this. Now, was there a piece here that for the projects that were approved of, wasn't there one of these amendments? It was if the project was approved prior to this, then they can continue with the same standards that the state did not update?

such as Parole Place, which is in Ward 3? I'm not familiar with the specifics of that. I think that... If you are talking about a project that already has received approval for its forest conservation plan prior to the changes, I believe that...

Right, it's Amendment 6. Yeah, it should not apply to any development application submitted on or after July 1. I just wanted to put that on the record, that any projects that was prior to July 1 will not have to follow this. It's those from July... two on because it says on or after oh excuse me it says on or after so yes july 1 on will be subject to this but those prior to such as parole place which is not abided by the mpdu standards do not have to do so okay i just want a clarification on that just to make sure that's on the record all right then is there a favor recommendation or any other motion for this amendment 11 Or just no action if you're okay, if since you don't have it in hand, that's also an option, but I just want to make sure.

You know, I'm going to avoid any vote. Not just I can't vote on something I can't see, but I do just want to say that any projects approved before a certain date will have to follow the state law for the housing certainty act. So. Which I think kicks in at the beginning of this month. So if it was approved before July 1st of this year. That agreements locked in the builder can do whatever it is. So.

Their emotion from I would move a favorable recommendation for amendment 11 to 01626. okay.

I'll 2nd, that is there all in favor. All right. Thank you. And so we will maybe have a motion if it's out there to give a favor recommendation for the legislation as amended. So moved. All right, is there a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Next, we have general discussion, future election discussion. We have special guests with us today. We are so pleased and honored to have them present on Ranked Choice Voting. We have Ranked Choice Voting Maryland with us today, and they're gonna provide a presentation to us. If you both will introduce yourselves, a little bit of your background, and then we could just jump right in. Asking for a password.

It's not there.

Thank you. My name is Michelle Whitaker. I'm the Executive Director for Ranked Choice Voting Maryland and a resident of Montgomery County, just for the record.

Hello, I'm Owen Anderson. I'm the Deputy Director for Ranked Choice Voting Maryland and I'm a resident of Baltimore County.

So we're really grateful for this opportunity to be able to present information on ranked choice voting and answer any questions that you may have as a committee, as well as help to continue to further the discussion we've had with residents across the city about what ranked choice voting could do for elections in the future. So the first piece, just in terms of what is ranked choice voting, there's three kind of main basic pieces to this. For voters, they vote for their favorite candidate, they rank their backups, and then they're able to make their voice heard throughout that election process, especially when you have more than two candidates running for a seat. So it really helps to make sure that voters have their voices heard and that candidates are able to really compete for all voters and really be able to represent all of the electorate in that particular election. Before we go into the brief history of it, let me just do a quick demo on this so that you see. We have, I brought some Lego blocks here. We have three candidates, yellow, blue, and green. They are our three candidates for Legoland County Executive, if you will. And there's a total of 16 votes that are here. And with ranked choice voting, what happens is that each voter gets to rank their choices in order of their preferences, as we said with the definition. Each one of these blocks represents a voter's vote. So their top choice and then any backups. Voters can rank as many or as few candidates as they like. And as you see with our board, we have some who've ranked three, some ranked one, some ranked two. So it's what the voter chooses in terms of how many they want to rank on their ballot. In order to win in a ranked choice voting election for this election, you need to get a majority, which out of 16 votes would be getting over eight votes in this election. So that would get you to the top of this board. After everybody's voted, we collect the votes and we look to see, based on the first choices, does anybody reach a majority? Based on where we are right now, no one has a majority. So we look at the candidate with the fewest votes, and that's blue, and they're eliminated. But you, as a blue voter, have your voice still heard. And so now this blue voter becomes a yellow vote. This blue voter becomes a green vote. Another blue becomes a green vote. And our final blue voter becomes a yellow voter, getting yellow to the top of the board and being our majority winner in the election. That's the basic process of how it works, both for what the voter does and then understanding the tabulation through simple blocks. And obviously, we're just debuting this for just the simple example. this is the process, this is the basis of what happens in elections across the United States that use it. A brief history of ranked choice voting. It has been used in the United States since 1877 in different forms, both the proportional form as well as the single winner version. Proportional ranked choice voting is used when you're electing multiple candidates for like a multi-seat election. So let's say three members to a house of delegates or an at-large body for a city council. The single winner version is what you use when you're electing a mayor or an individual to a district seat in a city or council, whatever the jurisdiction is. Cambridge, Massachusetts has been one of the longest running uses of proportional representation or proportional RCV since 1941. And the first city to use a single winner was Ann Arbor, Michigan, and they used it for a single election in 1975. In Maryland, the evolution of using ranked choice voting really started in the early 2000s when there was a stronger movement at looking at how do we improve our elections, reduce polarization that we were seeing both at the national level and how do we make sure that voters' voices will truly be heard. Tacoma Park, Maryland, in Montgomery County, was the first to adopt it in Maryland, and they started using it in 2007. Since then, we've had additional jurisdictions in the state look at it who are interested both at the county level and the city level. We're really excited that in 2025, Greenbelt adopted it through referendum, and then in 2026, Berwyn Heights did that as well. Those are both in Prince George's County. But we know across... the United States, there are more than 50 jurisdictions that use this. This includes New York City, many cities in the Bay Area, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and as many of you may have been paying attention and heard when Washington, D.C. used it for their recent primary election in June. Next slide. I wanted to just share kind of for Ranked Choice Writing Maryland, we are active across the state. We've had interest, as I said, in many different counties and cities that are looking at it. And we have these discussions not only with members of elected bodies, but residents who are really interested in seeing how do they improve their local elections, how do they make sure that more voices are heard. And that's what the critical piece of what we're trying to achieve in our work across the board. As we said, there's kind of the key pieces. For voters, they rank their candidates. That's what you need to do. When you're tabulating, you're looking at all four choices to see if anyone reaches the majority or the threshold that you're trying to reach. Once a candidate reaches that threshold, they win. If they don't, that's when you're seeing this process of the elimination, which is what's called an instant runoff. And if you've heard of, like, ranked choice voting before with different names, instant runoff is one of the other names that's been used for it, as well as preferential voting and alternative vote. And it is something that is transformative in our elections that we've seen not only in D.C., Tacoma Park, and New York, where candidates actually go out and seek the vote of other voters who may have a candidate as their first choice where they have a yard sign and i know if you've run um run for office as you all have or if you've done a campaign you know that oftentimes when you see someone who has the yard sign or a sticker for your opponent you're like okay i'm marking them off as like There are no vote with ranked choice voting, what you're going up to and saying, I know you really like this candidate and they are your top choice. I hope I can be your next choice and here's why. And it changes the dynamic of who we're talking to. And it's not just this like one sided thing where it's just like you have to get everybody or no one wins, which is often what people struggle with when you have outcomes that are plurality. Over and over, whether you're talking about city elections, county elections, federal elections, you're seeing winners with a plurality, which means they're winning with less than a majority, under 50%. And that means that more voters voted for someone else than the person who were declaring the winner in that race. And this isn't something to say there's a fault with the individual candidate that we're pointing at. It's our system that isn't allowing voters to fully reflect and express their vote. And we need a system that can do that. And this is our opportunity to do it with ranked choice voting. I wanted to just take a minute to just show, talk about election thresholds so people understand the concept, whether you're using it for single winner or multi-winner. While the city of Annapolis, all of the elections, if ranked choice voting was to be used, it's all going to be the single winner option. Just understanding that this threshold is what applies to a single winner race or when you start to have more than two seats that you're electing. And basically the principle is always the same. It's one divided by the number of seats plus one to equal what is the percentage threshold that you need. So for a single seat, one divided by the number of seats plus one is one divided by two, you get 50%. That's how you know that that's for a single winner race. And then as you're going and increasing the number of seats you're electing, that percentage goes down. matters there is that it creates a definite line of where you need to reach in order to win a seat in that race. And it creates a proportional system where you have fair representation and not one single body or one single small part of the electorate can elect everyone and leave other voices that do have a strong community presence without having a voice. So this is another reason why ranked choice voting is a really great addition to any jurisdiction. We have a couple of sample ballots from Washington, D.C. and then New York, just to show you what the format can look like on these ballots for Washington, D.C. Oh, sorry.

Are we supposed to see your slides?

I thought they were showing somewhere.

Yes, yes, thank you.

Virtually.

Yes. So this sample ballot for D.C., this is showing how they set up the format. I've cut the ballot kind of in half just to crop it to fit this. This is a long ballot style. They use similar equipment to the state of Maryland, which uses ES&S equipment. as their election vendor that's the same that dc uses and you can see the format in terms of how they structure any instructions they provide at the top of the ballot and then how they structured the actual ballot and placing two elections next to them you can put a ranked election next to a you know amendment yes or no question the format is really what you as the election board decide and determine to be the format for that particular election but it does work we know if esns has formatted it for multiple elections to fit on the ballot page and to fit multiple candidates um in there and that's really a design choice of like how they um put it all together. But just wanted to show you that example there.

We have a question really quick.

Oh yes, sorry.

So would it still be an alphabetical last name order? Do you have any suggestion or thoughts on how the names will be listed on the ballot? I've heard many times that it oftentimes gives advantages to those with last names closer to A than it does to those with last names closer to Z. And so Is there a thought in how the names are organized or ordered on the ballot?

So that's a decision of the Board of Supervisors. I think you all do, is it a selection? Alphabetical. Oh, no, it's alphabetical.

Yeah, the last name alphabetical, usually for all of the elections.

There are some jurisdictions that do more of a candidate picking a slot, which is actually what DC does. So they're showing here like A, B, C, D, but when they do the selections for that particular office, they're pulling the names out, and that becomes the order of the election for how candidates appear there. So I don't—I'm not aware of any data on, like, how ranked choice voting differs when—if the candidate is first on the list versus last on the list. There are always situations where if you have a large field, it's a lot for anyone to go through and see who's running, whether you're doing a ranked choice voting election or you're doing with our current system of just picking one. The biggest thing that you need to be mindful of as in the election space is like, how are you presenting it to allow voters to clearly see all of the candidates and choices there? So usually what they're thinking in ballot design, and that's why it's usually a longer, a 14 or a longer sheet is to allow if there is a long name of list of candidates that can fit on the ballot page a single ballot page and similarly if you're using digital technology that you can fit all of the names on a single screen but those are considerations that you have to make and i know like in some cases with some digital technology this happened in montgomery county um TWO ELECTION CYCLES AGO WHERE ONE CANDIDATE FOR A PARTICULAR OFFICE WAS ON A SEPARATE PAGE ON THE COMPUTER BALLOT ONLY BECAUSE OF THE NUMBER AND THEY COULDN'T SHRINK IT. IT'S THOSE THINGS THAT HAPPENED. THE ELECTION JUDGES HAD I THINK all of the machines to let voters know that this additional candidate for this office will appear on a separate page. So those are considerations that you need to really do during the testing of preparing for the election, of what does the ballot look like? What does your sample ballot look like? How does it view if you're doing digital ballots or a machine ballot and making adjustments as you can to comply with standards for visibility, accessibility, all of those pieces. Here's another example. This is for New York, and this was a special election in April. Similarly, you know, they have the list of the candidates. They have—because they also do—with their voter language access, they provide names in different languages, you're seeing a lot more more information on the ballot, obviously, but same principle in terms of how you list the names and then how you're listing the columns for making your rankings there. And they were also using, I believe, ES&S for their elections, but they've also done different methods. And I'll just point out that you can even do ranked choice voting by hand, which is how Tacoma Park started doing it initially. They were using paper ballots and doing hand counts. So it is something that both works with our current technology and all major vendors have RCV capabilities, as well as you can do it the analog way, if you will.

Oh, those are slogans underneath their names. We see the time is now.

So I believe because they have a unity slate or so they have a I think it's called a fusion ballot where they can be they can list certain information you you can be like the candidate that's endorsed by the Working Families Party and another organization and I think that's how those things are get appear there. So That's specific to their their election law. Mm-hmm

I think party affiliation or unaffiliated, if there is no party affiliation, is something that I've been more fond or supportive of because we want to be as transparent as we can to voters. And they should know if there is a party that they identify, the candidate identifies with, they should know who that is that they're supporting either way. But okay, that's good to see.

So, you know, one of the questions is why should we be doing this in Annapolis? A report, I think that was from 2021, was sharing how with the mayoral elections that many have not had a majority winner, so they've been winning with less than a majority in those elections. It's something to note in terms of how do we make sure that we continue to have a system that allows for all voters to be heard and for a candidate to win with a clear majority and a mandate to be there. We've had residents come and speak before the council the the previous council to to share their interest in there and talk about how they want to encourage more competition in different wards as well as encouraging other people to vote that's one of the strengths of using ranked choice voting is that we've seen through data and studies that have been done with the jurisdictions across the country that have been using ranked choice voting for over 20 years that more women and more people of color are likely to run and have a stronger chance of winning if using ranked choice voting. And it's not, it gives them an extra advantage, but it reduces that barrier that they may have had about running in the first place. And for some people recognize this, that you wanna run in a race and someone says, if you run in this race, you become the spoiler, you're gonna take away votes from this other candidate and then we're gonna get this candidate that we don't like. And again, no one who is stepping up and saying, I want to run for office, I want to represent my community, should be called a spoiler. And so we should be giving the tools to candidates to be able to run effectively and the tools to voters to be able to fully express their vote. And that's what we've heard from residents in Annapolis. And so we have a great opportunity here to move this forward. In addition, When we look at some of the recent races, and even in the 2025 election, Ward five had five candidates running in that race and the alderman one with a majority, which is great. But there are situations where that doesn't happen. And if you can look at the. primary elections this year for not only District 6 for the Anne Arundel County Council, but even for county executive and for the congressional district, all of the winners there won with less than a majority. And again, not disparaging any of those candidates who are moving on to the general election, but you're saying here that a less there were more people who voted for someone else and you don't really know if this is the candidate that truly was representative of the broad support of of the community and you want everybody to go kind of into a general election or into office with that strong mandate and understanding of who's representing them and we've seen it really transform things where uh candidates who win can see who their where other voters are are ranking them as a second or third candidate and understand like okay maybe that candidate was stronger on environmental issues or housing i need to be you know mindful of that and i want to make sure that i'm working on some of those issues that may be related to them and why they wanted me uh you know why they were looking at that other candidate so those are the really advantages to doing this for both again candidates voters and the community at large um So it does change that experience and really improves it. This just shows some of the exit poll data, and sorry, it's a little small, but we can also send the link to all this information. In all of these different cities, New York, Charlottesville, Virginia, in Alaska, Maine, and so on and so forth, where they've used ranked choice voting, they've done exit polls, and overwhelmingly, Voters support it. They like using it. They found it easy to use. There's all of this great data about what the experience is. I was looking through some data for New York City, and they did a breakdown even by boroughs. And you can see that even on a borough level, you had people who were ranking more than one candidate who were expressing their full choices and who liked using the system. And that's kind of the transformative piece that you can see that it is something that is usable for voters. It's translating into positive experience in elections and We also are seeing in some cases where you're seeing how it's impacting the way legislators are engaging with each other. In particular, in Alaska, a number of Republicans and Democrats have been elected through RCV elections, and they've expressed how this has helped them to really focus on those consensus issues that they can work together on as opposed to the polarizing issues. And I think all of us agree that that should be something that we should be able to find those balances and really to make sure that we're moving forward policy that's going to help all of our community.

Do we have any data at all or any feedback from other jurisdictions in Maryland, like Tacoma Park or the others that we have? Do we have any feedback from them or percentage?

I'm looking to see with the clerk for Tacoma Park, any election data or exit polls. Again, they've been using it for 20 years. I know informally that talking to residents, they're like, yeah, we love this. We don't want to get rid of it. Obviously, I'll see if there's any other formal polls or other information that they do have on that. And then the two jurisdictions that have adopted it, Greenbelt and Berwyn Heights, we're in the next phase of implementation. So they haven't used it in an election yet. It will be either 2027 or 2029. But in both cases, voters overwhelmingly approved those ballot measures by 67% and 76%. So, yeah. Okay. Six, seven, seven, six. Okay.

That was easy to remember that. Do you also have any... Information or data talking about referencing states that have reverted back or gone back to the traditional form of voting from our CV. Because I know that I've seen maybe a couple of states who said we'd no longer areas that we no longer want this. We want to go back. Do we have any because we, you know, we always got to be aware of the opposite side.

So, yeah, I will. i'm going to put in a request for to the organization fair vote that has a lot of they do a lot of the data research on that piece um just to see what they've done on comparisons but what we do know happens when you revert back to what is a winner take all system and um uh you know just picking one option is that you do increase the likelihood of continuing to have non-majority winners so that's kind of like one of the biggest things that happens the other thing is that in cities that have some cities that have adopted it or other jurisdictions where they've had runoff elections when you have ranked choice voting you eliminate runoffs obviously that's not something that happens with us in our context here in maryland but if you have runoff elections you're reducing or you're increasing the cost and a second election usually has much lower turnout right so Rank Choice Voting is a benefit. I'd have to see if there's any runoff jurisdictions that went from Rank Choice Voting back to a runoff system, but those are kind of the cost benefit analysis that they do often on that. I'll also just note that in the history, as I was sharing earlier about where it was used and the first use of it in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and even when it was used in Ashtabula, Ohio, and in Cincinnati, all of those cities saw something very interesting happen. They elected people of color, they elected women, and there was immediate backlash and a repeal of it. So the system worked in terms of the person who was elected really had that broad support. other social factors came in and they were like, we're not, we don't want to have this happen. And so we need to recognize that that's also something that is, there's kind of some power struggles that happen within changing systems. And I recognize that as well. And someone who, I currently don't vote under ranked choice voting. I live near Tacoma Park, but not close enough to be voting in their elections, obviously. But I see the transformative piece, and I want to see that in my elections as well in Montgomery County, and that's why I've been a really strong advocate for this for over 10 years. And I know it can make a difference, and I'm hoping that we can work with more jurisdictions on that. Oh, yeah, and states that have... issued bans, they were never using rank choice sorting in the first place. It's kind of something that they just, they did because- To keep that out. It just, yeah. But it wasn't something like it was being used in the state already, but we still have active work that we know of communities that are trying to make sure that it can be used in certain contexts, whether it's just at the local level or in other situations, so.

You did mention something about there being a runoff or another election, like primary versus general election, and how this would maybe eliminate or reduce us having to have multiple elections. It could just be one. Now, there is a process where you could do ranked choice in a primary and ranked choice in a general. Do you have any feedback or thoughts on that way of going about it?

So I view ranked choice voting as agnostic to like what type of election. So because you can use it in a primary, you can use it in a general election, you can use it to substitute for runoffs. so it's really like where do you want to apply it and what are you trying to solve in that situation right so if you want to maintain primary elections because you're doing the you want to have party primaries and through the that nomination then you can have ranked choice voting and continue to do that where you'll have a number of candidates running for those party nominations, use Ranked Choice Voting, and come out with the winner. And then you can use it again in the general election where you also may have independents or unaffiliated voters, which I know Annapolis has many that do run. So that gives another opportunity for candidates to run. for if you wanted to go to just one election, that is also possible. I think Annapolis is one of four cities that have primary elections. So most are just doing one election and electing their representatives to the city council. And they're nonpartisan elections, so yeah. So that's an important thing to note there. I think if you were considering to go to one election, I would either, you know, that's a larger discussion about are you completely moving away to like nonpartisan elections or is there a way that you wanted to Or is it you're just trying to like make sure that you have the most number of people participating and using ranked choice voting to determine the winner but those are kind of there's multiple considerations and I think would that would warrant more of a study of like what really makes sense for the city going forward and So the last piece I wanted to just talk about was election administration. And first to note, as I said earlier, state equipment is RCV capable. Our current state equipment is ES&S. We've been using that for a number of years. The state board is in a procurement process right now. and the updated voter equipment will still be rcv capable and has some additional features that they're looking at with the technology but we remain capable to do this at this moment if we wanted to use rank choice voting with our our state equipment For tabulation, depending on the vendor, the election vendor, either the tabulation software is already available and can be used, or you need to turn it on. There might be a cost associated with that, which we don't have data on the cost because usually that's through the contract negotiation agreements. that you would have with a vendor. But an alternative also is using RCTAB, which is a free open source and secure tabulation software that's produced by the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center, which is an election administration body that helps to support any jurisdiction using Ranked Choice Voting. And they partner with jurisdictions to help them get started on using RCTAB to do consulting, to help support election administrators. So they're a really valuable resource. And some of the election vendors use RCTAB within their tool to already create that connection and that easy ability to do the tabulation. uh rctab gets um again it's like a you you have that software and you set it up for your election and it's under the control of your board and it basically will will be set up for any election rules that you have how you handle ties how um how you handle um you know just like the counting process in general what you know what output um you're producing so it does all of that and is based on what your elections are Again, the programming piece is something that you would do with the vendor or with a consultant if you were setting that up. And then we rcv you know you need to be doing um voter education for all elections but if there's specific information that you're sharing about rank choice voting that can be incorporated in your existing voter education so it's not an a an add-on a separate atom but like within whatever you're already sending out to voters to remind them of the dates and how to register and all that piece you can also just include a section that is now on you know here's rank choice voting and how it works DC and Tacoma Park I know both have on their website along with just like the general election information there's a section of the website that's on like what's ranked choice voting and they usually have some type of sample ballot or a test ballot that you can use just to try out ranked choice voting again those are easy ways to like get people up to speed to provide information and to get started and we as well as a an organization ranked choice writing Maryland has been uh we continue to be involved and we'll support any jurisdiction that is using it in their upcoming elections to do uh supplemental voter education and outreach to complement whatever a board of in the city is doing with that so we want to make sure that we can reach the broadest number of voters and really have those discussions and give them the experience of what it's like to vote in an election

So is that you saying to help the city save costs that you all will take it to help us and take leadership in educating our voters in Annapolis and helping with resources and things of that nature?

Yes, that's part of our mission to do that. And we are in the process right now with we're having discussions with Tacoma Park that even though that they've been using it for 20 years, we want to still be part of kind of the engagement and we're going to be doing some surveys of voters there. So we're doing that. That's part of our work. It's not something where we're contracting to do it we're just we're we're saying we're here we're going to be a resource and we want to be able to to help support and our goal is to if the the board has specific language that they're using for how to describe rank choice voting what their what materials they put out we're making sure that we are consistent with that and then also like whatever else we're doing we're not um contradicting what the the board is and that's similar to what DC did with some of the advocacy groups that were involved. They similarly partnered with the DC Board of Elections to make sure that they could provide additional support. And they actually did some candidate training as well with folks on it. We just have a quote from our comptroller who's just down the street, and she's been a strong supporter of this. And so it's an investment that you need to make now. And one of the things that I want to just stress is that there's an argument to be said like, Hey, our elections, we don't have more than two people running in our elections all the time. And that may be the case. You'd have one situation in a primary, this past election, other primary elections, you've just had two candidates, general election, maybe just two candidates or one candidate running. That's okay. It happens in Tacoma Park as well, where sometimes there's only one candidate running in a ward or two candidates. They don't have to use rank choice voting in that election. But if more candidates run, If you have ranked choice voting available, you have an additional tool to provide to your voters, to provide to the community, to be able to fully express and elect people that are going to go on and represent the community. So I would really stress that being able to have it in place allows you to plan for that future where, if there are more candidates running, if you're changing other parts of your election system, if you're changing how often you're—what types of election you run or, you know, how—if it's open to everybody to run or how you're consolidating it, having ranked choice voting already in place makes sure that you don't have to worry about continuing a plurality elections and split votes and spoilers because you haven't addressed that issue yet. So, I would encourage folks to take the time to look at that investment. I know in the summary of the history that was provided in the agenda that it's important to note that like yes there's constraints with the current county board on what they can do because of their responsibilities and what their mission is and supporting cities is an addition that some some county boards do but not all and some work is done at the the state board level So we recognize that the shift there is something that we need to look at and see what responsibilities still could exist with the County Board of Elections, if any, like if it's more of just the registration piece, and then what responsibilities the city takes on. For a city of your size comparable, Greenbelt is smaller, but they've been running their elections, they use Clear Ballot, and when the Clear Ballot vendor and Clear Ballot is R3 capable, they have a technician who, on their election day is working with them for it currently does that for their current elections and we're seeing like if that's going to be their vendor going forward for future elections when they're using ranked choice voting as well but there's ways to make sure that that's incorporated and the cost that you've had with the county might transfer into what relationship you have with a particular election vendor but those are considerations that i think the um the Board of Supervisors needs to look at, the Council, of course, needs to make a decision and see what makes the most sense, and then figure out what agreements that you have with the County Board and any election vendor going forward.

Do you have the cost of the institution of this in the areas that we've already moved forward? Like, so when we say Tacoma Park, how much do you know have they had to spend on the elections?

They don't usually break it out as a separate, like this was an election, or this was the RCV cost. So I will, I'll see if I can get any other data specific from like Tacoma Park on this or the other cities. What I will say on the voter education piece is that can be, the additional cost can be somewhere between, I think, an additional 15 cents to, maybe a dollar more per voter for whatever material you're producing. Again, that depends on what are you deciding to do. So if you produce a printed guide and you're now adding another four, eight, 12 pages, that's an additional cost, obviously, for the printing. but it really depends on like, what are you doing? How are you incorporating this? And is there a change in the actual cost of producing that material? The cost of, there might be some one-time costs that you have like, for the turning on software, if that's something that you need to do for using our current equipment, or for a consultant that's setting up RCTAB for your first election, and then training your election staff or others to be able to manage that in future elections. Those could be some of the considerations. Again, it depends on the contract that you set up with whatever organization to help do that. I know the State Board of Elections does they do programming for their current equipment, that might be something that you could contract with them for programming that, but I don't know what the cost would be. I'm happy to try and see if I can get information, but you might have more success asking that directly as your legislative body.

So we'll definitely open the floor up for any other of our members to ask questions. The piece here that I will say is I think there could be a consensus for us to have it be a ballot question for any major electoral reformation change, which this committee will be focusing on, at least as long as my fellow members are okay with me making that a priority. But we will be focusing on that. And for any major changes like this, I think the voters should always have a say in us bringing forth. And so do you have any experience or thoughts surrounding it being ballot question versus it just being instituted, maybe experience of how it worked for you all supporting and ballot questions on educating the voters through that process?

Yeah, so as you mentioned, the city has the ability to make changes to their election code through either method. And I think it depends on what you feel is like the appropriate way to like move that forward. And so through a ballot initiative and Greenbelt, What we did is we developed our own campaign plan and our outreach strategy on that. The city provided basic information on what the ballot question was and they obviously drafted the question and then we just went out and talked to voters and we attended multiple community events we were at their farmers market we were knocking on doors we were holding hosting our own like uh events just to get people out and and have conversations so uh we are more than happy to do that and and kind of plan out that through if that's the the direction that the the council chooses to go um And it is a good way to make sure that you get an understanding of where voters at that moment are and kind of move forward with making the decision. I think the consideration of which way to go is really kind of up to you as a body and what you think works best. But either way, I think you can also get feedback from voters and residents if you're doing the legislative process. through public comment and hearings and really doing that process as well. But I can understand the merits of both.

Thank you. Alderman Schenreier, Alderman Thorpe, would you like to add any questions or anything? Okay. Thanks, Alderman Schenreier. Yes, Alderman Thorpe.

I do. I have a lot of questions. Thank you very, very much for doing what you do, for arguably one of the most important things we do in our country, advocating for good elections, and for your time this afternoon. Thank you. You all are clearly advocates, and so my questions are going to challenge your advocacy, only so that I can understand this because, and I think our voters should fully understand the pros and cons. One of the basis for the arguments of RCV is that a plurality is needed. What data do you have that indicates for RCV that we had a different candidate win as a result of RCV than who would have won in the first round?

So that's a great question. I'm sorry.

Let me actually also preface this. Our decision process isn't just RCV or conventional. One option we have is to align our elections with the county or state. which would vastly reduce our risk, our costs, et cetera. So my questions really are basing on the choices we have. So what data, so back to my question, what data do you have that says the number of different outcomes that would have happened had we not done RCV?

So I believe FairVote did a study on this and it was somewhere in either the 70s or 80s range that it's usually like the candidate in like kind of that first place with just the most votes. is the likely winner in a ranked choice voting election as well. It comes out as the majority winner. The question isn't really about how we look at that piece, but what decisions voters are making in the ballot. And that's really where the challenge is. And I often say, election if we look at our elections right now and say what would be the rcv outcome i say there's your that's comparing apples to oranges or i don't know maybe even you know bread to oranges or something like it's two different things right because you make a different decision in our current election system about i have to vote for one and who am i going to vote for and if there's two candidates you really like among a list of five, you're trying to figure out, okay, which one has the most likely to win? Who am I really passionate about? Is this gonna impact something else? And then you're making that choice. In a ranked choice voting election, you're really saying, like, this is my candidate. I love that candidate. I like this person too. Great. First, second, third, go on. So you have a different calculation that you're making in your head when you're voting. So it is not possible to say we know for sure, looking at any past election that is using our current process, to say this is how it would be the outcome. it most of the time that can be what happens but it doesn't mean that that's really like that is the way that it's always going to happen so what you are getting through ranked choice voting is a definitive answer on this is the candidate of choice as a majority winner in the election versus something where you often have those folks that are really close, like two candidates that are like each at 30% or whatever, where it's like you're splitting hairs and often like splitting between like, you know what, 40 votes, five votes, you know, it's something like that's not saying like there's a definitive answer about who was really the winner in that election.

Yeah, so no question about it. People have their thought process, whether it's conventional or rank choice voting. But I do think, It is statistically an important number, and so I just want to go back because I'm not sure you actually, I think it was 70 or 80%.

I'd have to look back and find the report from fair vote. So I will make sure to look that up and send information to the committee. Um, but I. I don't remember what the date of that study is, but I do remember seeing something about that.

I would very much appreciate that because I've been told it's 96%. Um, that that when a rank choice votes were.

after the tabulated that 96 of the people who won it oh also had the most votes in the first round that may be where it is i i'm not sure if it's that well let me just check but the there's rare situations where you have a candidate in like second or third place that really jumps up ahead so so yes that if you're asking about that that's the question Yeah, that doesn't happen as frequently. I think it's happened in a few races that I want to say that there might have been one in Minnesota or Alaska that had that happen. But again, it is a very rare thing because yes, the person, when you are tabulating first choices, it's most likely that person will stay as you're transferring eliminating candidates with fewer votes and transferring votes to other candidates that they still remain on top but actually thinking this uh i think there was a new york election one of the assembly elections where we did see that happen so it just it just varies in terms of like where the the support is with candidates

Yeah. Would you say that that would be a consideration that we should have as we decide, and these other factors I'm going to mention a little bit, voter turnout, candidates and all that, but that if conventional voting has roughly close, greater than 96% of the same results, that is a factor we should consider? Okay.

I would say that you're looking at one part of the election and I would compare it to being like if you, in our current system, if you looked at vote tallies for just like election day and made an assumption about like, oh, well, if this is where they are on election day, Which sometimes that is like, if they're leading an election day, they might lead to sorry if they're leading during early voting, they're going to lead through to the election day. Right? That may be the case, but that doesn't mean you really know, like, where, where they are in the process. So, again, I would look at that differently. You're looking at 1. Uh, aspect of the total tabulation and counting process in rank choice voting and comparing it to the final total. Of how we do our current election, so I wouldn't say that that's a fair comparison, but I would say, like, you, you want to be asking the question of. What do we want to see in our elections, or what are we trying to achieve? And these are the questions where you're asking about turnout, you're asking about the tenor of elections, the ability for voters to feel like they can participate and have their voices heard. And there's many ways to solve that. And I will say that ranked choice voting is not the only solution and i would not like you know i i love rank choice voting but i know like there there may be a situation where if you're really looking at you know solving a particular problem rank choice writing might not solve that if you're trying to do like hey we're just trying to make sure that we uh i don't know um uh that we always have candidates who can run in every primary that's not going to be a guarantee with rank choice voting you know you might get more of that if you add public financing or if you have term limits or something like that. But what I often say is like, if you're adding, let's say term limits or public financing, which increase the opportunities for more candidates to run for office, ranked choice voting can be helpful with what you then have as the outcome of that. So that's where I really think partnering and understanding different types of different solutions and reforms and how they work together. Similarly, with the question about when you have your elections and moving it to the even years or to to be coincide with the the state elections um that can be again a great way to help increase turnout however there might be some other caveats to that that you have to consider um for tacoma park which they moved their elections to be in the same time frame so they're having an election this november this year uh they did that i think two election cycles ago that they changed it because they have all resident voting and 16 and 17 year old voting they have to do two elections at the at different times so they are getting the benefit of extra turn or higher turnout however voters have to go here to vote for the in the county elections and then go over here to vote for the city elections i know you don't have that problem but again it's things that you have to be aware of like is there anything that that the city is doing that might prevent it from being a joint election or on the ballot i will say like doing ranked choice voting does not prevent you from being on the ballot for the same ballot with um with the county elections because you're it's just the method of voting you're not changing anything with the uh people who are voting in that election which is the primary concern and challenge that you have with municipalities that might have a different voter base

Several times during your presentation, you made a very compelling argument that ranked choice voting provides for more people of color to run and more women. What data do you have to support that?

So the organization Represent Women, along with FairVote, have done studies. I think there's some other organizations that have done some independent studies that I can pull the data and send that to the committee as well. And this has, again, it was, some of these studies were done over the last five to 10 years looking at the history of jurisdictions that have used it and what changes that we've seen. And so particularly when you're looking at running for office, we've seen that women have been able to, like there are more women mayors. I think there was a comparison that Represent Women did of like, there were more women mayors in RCV cities of comparable size compared to other cities. So there are these dynamics that happen. So I'm happy to share more of that data with you. Yeah, but it's a common piece and I'll just say as someone who's worked as a campaign manager and talked to different candidates, I've heard this as a concern where they are, worried that if they run and there's another strong candidate from their community who's running that they them become canceling out each other or they have to like there's a conversation of like okay they they told me to sit down this time and i'll i'll get my turn next time right I know that happens and there's different situations or why that might make sense, but that's a decision made because our system is failing us, not because this candidate who has great ideas this year is not a good candidate. And so that's where I really think it's an opportunity. So I think it's given, as one example, New York City, The first year that they used it in 2021, they elected a majority women and majority people of color city assembly for the first time in the city's history in New York City. In Salt Lake City, which used it in I think 2022, they were able to elect more women and I think the first LGBTQ member to their city council. So while representation can vary in terms of what does it mean to have representation on the council, That's one dynamic of it. It also can mean that you have more housing advocates who are on the council or more environmental advocates. Those are the sort of things that you're seeing. And then how are they governing or making policies together with the people that they work with? And I think you see a different dynamic of how they're even just going into office in that way.

Okay. Thank you. I'd appreciate if you would send us that.

Yeah, I'm making a note, yeah.

So I just have two more quick questions. What happens in RCV when a voter votes for two number ones?

So that's one of the things, as I showed before, what will often be on the ballot, as well as in any voter information guide, is some directions on like, here's how you complete your ballot, and here's things that you need to make sure that you don't do, like mark two candidates as your top choice. could potentially invalidate the ballot but it's also a decision of what how the Board of Supervisors wants to handle those situations so again in the regulations you would put in the the board might say when the there are two markings for the candidates have the same ranking they're going to take, they may choose like one, the first option is the one that is gonna be. Like they could make that decision as a board of like, this is our rule of how we handle that. Or we don't, we invalidate the ballot altogether. So it's a rule process that you have to just figure out like what is the option that you're going to do.

Do you have any data how often that happens?

The error rates for RCU ballots are in the same range as our current system. And most of the time, error rates are around 1% to 2% of the ballots. You really want to get under 2%. And so you're seeing the same kind of level of that. And again, when you have higher error rates, it's usually due because either there was not voter education or there might have been an issue with how the ballot was formatted. you know back in like early 2000s chads and all that issues like you have the same issue if you don't do really good ballot design on any ballot you can you can increase uh ballot error so we encourage like the center for civic design is a non-profit that helps jurisdictions with understanding good ballot formats I included this in the document that I sent over of like kind of different grid formats that work for for doing ranked choice voting elections and so they can give you some insights on what would help to reduce error rates as well as what instructions you give and how you do the voter education in advance

Final question. Do you take a position on whether rank choice voting should be in primaries and generals or just primaries like some or just generals? Or do you just advocate for rank choice voting?

We just say we'd like to see rank choice voting in elections. Thank you. Whatever makes sense for you all. We're not necessarily saying that you need to change that to make it work. And I think you can take a look at the many different models, whether it's nonpartisan races or Alaska uses a top four kind of model where they still have a primary, but top four that uses then goes to rank choice voting. There's different ways that you can do this for whatever makes the most sense for what you're trying to achieve. One thing that Annapolis may be thinking about is with unaffiliated voters who across the state are increasing and becoming a larger segment of the electorate, how are they participating? How do unaffiliated candidates participate in elections and the discussions that are happening? There could be a situation where however you're structuring your primary and general election that maybe their independents are running in that primary as a different function to then go on to a general with whatever candidates uh they have again something that you would need to look at isn't about rank choice voting specifically but how you want to look at structuring things to answer the questions of what are we trying to achieve who who's being left out of kind of the policy or community discussions that we want to have part of it more you know how are you making those determinations that what levers help to move that up in the right direction so

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Mr. Chairman.

Absolutely. So we have here to touch on the point of the cost because 1 of the. I would say a deterrence for the city. Having this as 1 of our election pieces would be the cost as well as the. Doing it, actually doing it, having a tab because we've, I know in previous election cycles where the city has had to do its own elections or run its own elections without the support of the count, the county, um, it's been, you know, wasn't as easy as some would have liked. Um. And of course, elections are never really easy. So could you maybe just alleviate some of that thought surrounding the cost and the outcomes and how maybe that investment would positively or maybe just not reap the benefits that we're looking for, as well as from your experiences in the city, such as Tacoma, where they've had the county doing its own separate election, you mentioned, and them having to run their own elections in a different area. how that has worked out for them, seeing that for us, we appreciate the county support, but they're denying the use of their staff to have this be one of our ways of running elections.

So, I mean, I first want to just acknowledge and say, like, the work that election administrators do often goes—is an unseen piece that is fundamental to our democracy, and we don't often invest enough in the people and the resources that they need. as a note at the federal level there was a recent bill that was introduced the voter choice act which would actually provide more funding to states and jurisdictions that use ranked choice voting so that they do have the needs so i'm hoping that you know in a future time that that would get passed and i can easily answer the question that there's actual federal support coming from uh for people who are looking at rank choice voting That's not the case right now, but what I will say is your costs around the, I think it estimated around $200,000 is what your overall cost is right now with staffing some other needs within working with the county, correct? And your separate, separate budget that you have for the administration piece i think that was in the last uh the table there um and so it is likely that whatever that that amount is you could transfer that in terms of like what do we need to do to have uh is that one of a staff person or one staff person and a half-time person um that you have in-house who are then working on elections and doing that or or what is the change that you make for uh contractually to

The chart has here from 2021, $100,198 with a total of $225,547 for the entire election. And then for 2025, we have $313,846 with a total of $465,389.

So, you know, without fully breaking down some of those costs, it is related. I know like some of those are related to just the staff time or like what equipment is being used, other material that is printed through vendors. So you still have those costs. So those are kind of like, those are fixed costs that can move over to if you're doing more of the administration. I think you do have to figure out like what is your staffing look like for managing your elections, if that is what you are now taking on more of. And we—with—as an example, Rockville, which they're looking at ranked choice voting, but they don't use it right now, but they have an agreement with the Montgomery County Board of Elections primarily on voter rolls and I think using their their poll books, right? But they do most of the administration of the election on their own and have their clerk along with one of their other staff who are like the main leads on administering the election, connecting with their election vendors and other things that they're working on. Greenbelt, similarly, they have a clerk and their city administrator as well as the board of supervisors work closely with their vendor, which has been Clear Ballot, and if they continue with Clear Ballot, like how they work with them to identify what they're doing throughout the election. And my observation from their 2025 election was that the contractor that they had with Clear Ballot was there as a support of how they were how the machines were working how the tabulation was working how the results were coming out and helping to address any issues technical issues for them and then but the board of supervisors took on the main responsibility of you know running all the processes reviewing the ballots all of the things that were going on there so i i It's hard to say exactly what the cost would be, but I think you could have comparable costs, possibly a little lower, but it really depends on what you need to bring over from those costs that you've had in the past. uh where where there might be some other cost savings depending on how you're running the election um what kind of staffing you think is appropriate for supporting your elections continually and then identifying that clearly i think going back rockville does have a really great election procedural manual that they have that really kind of outlines some of the steps that they're doing and things that they're reviewing and what they've given responsibility to the county board if there's something that still is mandated by law that you need to do there that they need to do versus what you are doing as a as a body independently so i'm happy to try and look up some information as i can get it I would say that the cost for working with an election vendor for equipment—for voting equipment also depends on, like, how many, you know, machines that you might need, you know, what kind of other equipment that you would need on Election Day or during early voting. You have eight polling sites, right? So how are you staffing all of those? What do you need at those locations? Those are all things that you have to kind of figure out the cost around it. And I know for places like Berwyn Heights, they do everything on just election day. So it's kind of like, one spot, four machines where whatever they have there, it's like they can do it right there versus you have it spread out a little bit more and it requires a little bit more of coordination in that process. So I would say that there's definitely some staffing costs, but I would explore what Tacoma Park is doing and how that might work or other cities of similar size and how it would make sense for doing that, but yeah.

All right. Well, as we finish this up, the one question I think we can kind of end off is to Pat Annapolis on the back. Why are we such a prospect? Why are we such of a priority to bring RCV? What's the urge or what's the thoughts surrounding Annapolis would be a prime hotspot to bring RCV to it?

because our conversations with residents who are interested in this and they've expressed the need or what they've seen in past elections and said, how can we make this happen? And again, we don't go into cities and say, go to Ranked Choice Voting. What we really do is listen to people and if folks are interested in Ranked Choice Voting, we start having discussions with them. So I don't remember, it was probably like four or five years ago where we started having discussions and canvases with people who were interested and coffee sessions with folks and doing demonstrations and working with the League of Women Voters or Common Cause on just talking to people about it. And then we got to a point where there was enough really support, interest, and clear pathways that residents said that were there, that we've been here to really continue that. So our work is all based on listening to communities and where they say they're interested in this, we're happy to come in and be part of the process, but we're never trying to dictate what happens in a community. of the cities that we've mentioned to you it's because there are people who've been interested reached out to us we've had conversations over years and are you know moving the process forward that way so that's that's how we operate so that's it that's what the premise was for that yeah

And to be clear, you've been working in Annapolis on this for the past years, you just mentioned. This isn't brand new to Annapolis. The conversation, as we know, there was a piece of legislation that was brought forth here. Of course, they tabled it. So it's been an ongoing work. And so we appreciate you all for encouraging and just helping us to improve our elections for whatever that capacity may be. Well, you have a best one, okay?

I'll also just point out, you know, Annapolis does also set a really great example. Rockville set an example right before the pandemic of using all vote-by-mail, and they became really a key partner in the state understanding how to move vote-by-mail forward during the pandemic. So I think it's important to recognize that cities can be that place of both innovation and kind of exploring what works best, and also create the case scenario that shows here's how you can implement it and implement it well. So we have Tacoma Park. And they have been implementing it well. And I think people have said, like, you know, that's a much smaller city and how it looks. I think Annapolis also presents, here's a larger city that's really vibrant and diverse and has all these different dynamics, you know, with the electorate and other things. How does ranked choice voting work there? And what you set as an example can help the state board can help any legislator across the state understand that this is something that's scalable to other places. So you could also be kind of in that way a flagship of like setting an example and helping move communities forward and knowing what they can do and how they can do it well.

Yeah, we are the capital of the state. I'm going to constantly say it. We have to set precedent. So I support and agree with that wholeheartedly. If there are any other questions from our committee members, we are right on the clock on that dot 158. We plan to end at two. So if there are no other questions, we will, I know there were two, if not three pieces of data. We love, I love the simulation, by the way. I think that even a child would probably, we love Legos. But i know there are two pieces or three pieces of data that we wanted so if you have to look back at the beating or just reach out please definitely make sure we can have that thank you alderman thorpe but if there are no other questions or thoughts um for the good then we will adjourn at 1 58 p.m july 23rd blessings everyone