The basement of Bardog Tavern turned into a mini election headquarters Tuesday night.
The purpose was to raise awareness and educate voters about Instant Runoff Voting.
“Instant Runoff Voting allows you to rank your first, second and third choices and that way you don’t have to come back for an expensive, low turnout, runoff election. It saves time, saves money and allows more voters to participate,” said Steve Mulroy, University of Memphis Law Professor.
Mulroy organized this mock election. The sliders represented the candidates and voters ranked their best slider. Mulroy explained how it works.
“I think I like the Casey Chicken the most, so I’m going to mark this as my first choice, I think I like the beef second, so I’m going to mark that as my second choice, and Payton pork’s coming in so I’m going to mark that as my third choice,” Mulroy explained. But let’s suppose that beef doesn’t get majority, no one gets the majority in that case we take the candidate that has the fewest votes, let’s say it is pork, and we eliminate that candidate and then we take just the ballots for pork and we look at each one and say well who was their second choice, this one second choice was chicken, this one was beef, then we step back and say now, who has the majority of the vote.”
Mulroy says Memphis residents already voted for term limits and Instant Runoff Voting, but Memphis City Council put three referendums on the November 6th ballot that include those issues. Supporters think Memphis should decide itself.
“If number 3 got like 1 percent less than number 2, but they’re out. But they might have been better than number 2 and number 1 by all the voters and that’s where instant runoff voting helps,” said Steve Baser, who attended the event.
Early voting starts Wednesday and Mulroy is encouraging people to vote no to the referendums.
