Burlington Ballot Proposes Big Changes in City Election Rules 

click to enlarge

• Matthew Roy ©️ Seven Days
• All Legal Resident Voting sign in Burlington

Voting in Burlington could look much different if residents approve a slate of charter changes on Town Meeting Day. The March 7 ballot will determine how local elections are conducted, who can cast votes and whether voters themselves can put issues on the ballot.

Most of the questions are familiar to city voters. They'll again consider extending voting rights to noncitizens living in Burlington legally, a proposal residents rejected in 2015. They'll also revisit the use of ranked-choice voting in mayoral races, a method they abandoned in 2010. And they'll review redrawn voting districts to rebalance the population in the city's eight wards, just as they did in 2014.

New this year, and perhaps most controversial, is a proposal that would allow voters to enact city ordinances by referendum. If it passes, the so-called "Proposition Zero" would also let voters place nonbinding advisory items directly on the ballot.

All four items would change the city's charter, meaning that even with voter approval, they would still need the OK of the state legislature and Gov. Phil Scott.

Confused? Here's an explanation of each of these ballot questions.

Proposition Zero

Burlington's ordinances dictate everything from what types of trees can be planted in city parks to the hours it's acceptable to use a leaf blower. City councilors have the authority to approve such rules and to rescind them.

Proposition Zero, however, would allow residents to place proposed ordinances on the ballot by collecting signatures of 5 percent of registered voters. The same could be done to repeal an ordinance if the council refused to reconsider it.

Opponents of Prop Zero argue that Burlington is a representative democracy and that allowing petitioners to overrule the council is unwise. Those in favor contend that direct citizen action could be a "check" on elected officials' power.

Prop Zero organizer FaRied Munarsyah, who is running as an independent for the South District city council seat, said the measure would allow residents who feel disenfranchised to have a direct say in how their city functions. Voters can already petition to add charter changes to the ballot — such as the controversial question this year to create a police oversight board. But they can't order up votes on ordinances.

Councilor Joan Shannon (D-South District), who is running for reelection against Munarsyah and Progressive candidate Will Anderson, said ordinances should be vetted by councilors and city attorneys.

"It's an iterative process with the public, and it happens in the public eye," said Shannon, who has served on the council's Ordinance Committee. Crafting policy by referendum, Shannon said, is "just dangerous."

Mayor Miro Weinberger is opposed, too. At a recent press conference, he recalled how activists in 2019 petitioned for a ballot item to ask voters whether they wanted to cancel the $4 million renovation of City Hall Park. The council rejected the request with a 6-6 tie vote.

"I very much appreciated that the council took that action," Weinberger said. "If Prop Zero passed, they wouldn't be able to do that."

Munarsyah argued that councilors would still have a say in the process. The ballot language would allow the council to discuss the wording of a citizen-drafted ordinance proposal and alter it "to avoid repetitions, illegalities, and unconstitutional provisions," but not to "materially change its meaning and effect."

Ordinances can be complicated, and the short versions that would be printed on ballots wouldn't fully describe the proposed change. But Munarsyah argued that's no different from council-generated ballot items.

Munarsyah has also heard criticism that Prop Zero would allow deep-pocketed special interest groups to petition for ballot items. But he said special interests — including landlords and business leaders — already control city politics.

"That's a very good concern about money in politics," he said, "but if [opponents are] thinking Proposition Zero is gonna be the cause of that, they're looking at it the wrong way."

All-Resident Voting

Hemant Ghising came to Burlington in 2011 after living for 18 years in a refugee camp in Nepal. Ghising, who is Bhutanese, became a U.S. citizen six years later.

On Town Meeting Day, Ghising will proudly vote yes on Question 4, which would grant the right to vote in city elections to legal noncitizens who are age 18 or older. That includes permanent legal residents, or green card holders; those with eligible work permits; and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, also known as "DREAMers."

Ghising believes all Burlington residents should have a say in their local government.

"It's not about politics, that you belong to certain parties," he said. "It's about being human, bringing that sense of belonging."

A victory would signal a shifting tide in Burlington. In 2015, voters turned down a similar measure, 58 to 42 percent.

Since then, Montpelier and Winooski have approved noncitizen voting, although not without challenges — including from Gov. Scott, who vetoed the measures in June 2021. Lawmakers overrode him, but the Vermont GOP and the Republican National Committee subsequently filed lawsuits alleging a violation of the Vermont Constitution. Both cases have since been dismissed, and in both cities noncitizen voters are showing up at the polls.

If approved in Burlington, the measure would grant suffrage to 5 percent of residents — about 2,132 people, according to U.S. Census data.

The city's Community & Economic Development Office has launched a robust educational campaign about the ballot item. A frequently-asked-questions section of the city website clears up whether noncitizens would be able to vote in state and federal elections (they wouldn't) and whether they could run for local office (they could). The FAQ has been translated into six languages: Arabic, French, Nepali, Somali, Swahili and Vietnamese.

CEDO has also produced short informational videos and distributed 300 lawn signs around the city. Its Trusted Community Voices liaisons, including Ghising, who regularly meet with new American residents, have been fielding questions about the proposal.

Gillian Nanton, CEDO's assistant director for community engagement, neighborhoods and workforce development, said immigrants and refugees are very interested in the ballot item.

"They see this as a process leading, potentially, to citizenship," she said. "They feel that if this passes ... that this gives them great opportunity."

Ghising said extending voting rights to noncitizens, many of whom fled war-torn countries, would allow them to be part of a democracy while they wait to apply for citizenship, a process that can take six or more years.

"We don't make a citizen just by sitting [for] a test," he said. "It's more about citizenship building, making them sense that this is their home now."

Ranked-Choice Voting

After a somewhat tortured process decided the city's mayoral contest in 2009, Burlington abandoned ranked-choice voting. But now a measure to restore its use in mayoral contests is back.

Under the system, voters rank candidates in order of their preference. If no contestant gets a majority of votes, the one with the fewest votes is eliminated. The second-choice votes of everyone who picked that candidate are then tallied. The process continues until somebody wins more than 50 percent.

In 2009, it took three rounds before Progressive Bob Kiss won with 51.5 percent of the tally — despite notching fewer first-place votes than his Republican challenger, and fewer first- and second-place votes than the Democrat. The result cast doubt on ranked-choice voting, and voters abandoned it in 2010.

Thirteen years later, the electorate may be warming to the increasingly popular voting method. A ballot item this year asks voters to consider reviving ranked choice in mayoral elections, plus those for school commissioner and election officials.

Ranked choice is already in use for city council races, having been approved by voters on the 2021 ballot. It was first used in a December 6 special election — and voters felt "overwhelmingly positive" about it, according to the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, which conducted informal exit interviews that day.

"Voters felt really empowered," said Sam McGinty, a democracy advocate with VPIRG. "I think voters are really looking forward to expanding this pro-voter reform."

Councilor Shannon, another proponent, said ranked choice more accurately reflects the will of the people. Under Burlington's current system, a winner can be crowned with a minimum of 40 percent of the vote — meaning the majority of voters prefer someone else. Mayor Weinberger, for example, won his last reelection bid with 43 percent of votes; his competitors, Progressive Max Tracy and independent Ali Dieng, won 42 and 13 percent, respectively.

Had ranked choice been in place then, those who voted for Dieng would have had their votes reassigned to their second-choice candidate to determine the outcome.

Weinberger, for his part, told Seven Days in a statement that candidates don't try as hard to distinguish themselves from one another in ranked-choice elections because they're vying for second- and third-place votes. In 2020, Weinberger vetoed an attempt to reintroduce ranked choice for mayoral contests. But he let this year's item head to the ballot without his signature. He plans to vote no.

Are voters still wary after the 2009 mayoral race? Maybe a bit, Shannon said. But her sense is that most are ready to embrace the change.

Redistricting

Burlington's population has grown since the last U.S. Census, in some wards more than others. New voting maps on this year's ballot would change district and ward boundaries so that all residents have more equal representation.

The new numbers look good on paper. Divided equally, the population in each of Burlington's eight wards should be 5,593. Redistricting rules say the new counts must be within 10 percent of that total to avoid a legal challenge.

But that target wasn't the only goal. City staff had three objectives when making maps: maintain city neighborhoods, such as the Old North End; do away with "district" seats, which represent two wards apiece; and redistribute the large college student population in Ward 8.

The new design fails on one count: The district seats would live on. But whether the maps check the other two boxes is up for debate.

Ward 8's population of college students would dip from 75 to 46 percent. The change means some former Ward 8 denizens would find themselves living and voting in Wards 1 and 6 instead. Boundaries of other wards would change, too; large swaths of the North Avenue corridor that are in Ward 4, for example, would be absorbed into neighboring Ward 7.

One of the more controversial aspects of the map is its treatment of the South End. The King Street-Maple Street neighborhood, home to a sizable number of immigrants and low-income residents, remains divided between two wards despite advocates' call to group the area together.

The maps passed the council with a vote split on party lines. The four Democrats and two independents voted yes; the four Progressives, no. The candidates running for city council are equally divided on the matter.