ELi Voter Guide to the East Lansing Charter Amendment Proposals
This article was originally published on Sept. 28, 2023, and was republished on Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, with updated information about the forum video now being available.
The City of East Lansing has a busy ballot for the election that is now officially underway and ends on Election Day, Nov. 7, 2023.
Those eligible to vote in the city can cast up to three votes in the City Council race. (Find ELi’s nonpartisan voter guide to the Council election here.)
Voters are also being asked to consider three amendments to the City Charter. The charter is the governing document of the city and is changed when over half of voters casting ballots on an amendment proposal vote “yes.”
Here’s a rundown of the three proposals and information on a fourth that ultimately didn’t make it to the ballot but is potentially implicated in this election.
Proposal to increase the number of people on Council from five to seven:
The Council voted 4-1 on July 19, 2023, to put this item on the ballot. The wording of this proposal is as follows:
“Currently, the City of East Lansing Charter establishes that the City Council be composed of five (5) members. “The City Council is proposing that Charter Chapters 3 and 4 be amended to change the composition of the City Council to seven (7) members, of which the additional members shall be elected at the next regular City election as established by Charter. “Shall the amendment as proposed be adopted?”
People who are FOR this proposal, including four Council members (Mayor Ron Bacon, Mayor Pro Tem Jessy Gregg, Dana Watson and Noel Garcia) and some Council candidates, say it will increase representation and diversity on the Council, lower the workload of Council members (for example, by spreading out the jobs of being Council liaisons to various boards and commissions), prevent a block of three from taking over the Council as a majority (a steady majority of four is politically harder to assemble) and bring East Lansing’s Council size more into line with other municipalities in the area. Bacon has also said it will help Council to meet quorum more easily.
People who are AGAINST this proposal, including one Council member (George Brookover), some Council candidates, and some former mayors generally are giving as their reason that now is not the time to be making significant changes to the City Charter. They want a formal charter review process first.
Interim City Clerk Marie Wicks has noted that a bigger Council will put more of a strain on city staff.
If this charter amendment passes, the Council size will not be increased until the November 2025 election. That’s when Brookover’s and Dana Watson’s terms will be ending, so instead of there being two seats open on the November 2025 ballot, there would be four.
Proposal to change the swearing-in date:
The Council voted 4-1 on July 11, 2023, to put this item on the ballot. The wording of this proposal is as follows:
Currently, the City of East Lansing Charter establishes that City Council member terms of office begin the Tuesday following that City election. The City Council is proposing that Charter Section 3.3 be amended to change the commencement date of City Council member terms of office to the first Tuesday following January 1 of the following calendar year, and shall be effective beginning at the next regular City election. Shall the amendment as proposed be adopted?
In effect, if this charter amendment passes, the swearing-in date of Council will be moved by about six or seven weeks, from mid-November to early January. Right now, the new Council is typically sworn in at the first meeting after the election. If this passes, there will be a lame duck period.
Why is this being proposed? The idea is to give a lot of time for election counting to finish before anyone is sworn in. Right now, canvassing (vote counting) may not be finished one week after the election.
People who are FOR this proposal, including four Council members (Mayor Ron Bacon, Mayor Pro Tem Jessy Gregg, Dana Watson and Noel Garcia), view this as providing that East Lansing’s swearing-in will fall in line with the state’s canvassing procedures. Gregg has also noted that there are typically not very many Council meetings between Election Day and New Year’s Day because of the holidays, so she does not think there will be many meetings where lame ducks are voting. (Under state law, a Council meeting can be held if the public is given 18-hours notice and a majority of Council members show up. This means the typical schedule can be amended with short notice.)
People who are AGAINST this proposal, including one Council member (George Brookover) and some Council candidates, say this is the wrong way to go about this change. They agree the swearing-in needs to happen after canvassing is finished but say the swearing in date should be changed to “the first Tuesday after canvassing is complete,” not changed to January. (Interim City Clerk Marie Wicks has noted that calling for the swearing-in on “the first Tuesday after canvassing is complete” would be sufficient to meet state election law.) Those who are against this amendment also say now is not the time to be making significant changes to the City Charter. They want a formal charter review process first.
Proposal to support ranked-choice voting and special elections to fill Council vacancies:
This charter amendment proposal was put on the ballot not by Council but through a petition campaign run by RankMIVote. The people who organized the petition didn’t provide language for the ballot, so Council had to decide what language to put to the voters. State law limits the word count so that proposals will fit reasonably on the ballot, so the Council could not put forward the entire petition.
On Aug. 13, Council decided to pull section 3.1a and put that on the ballot. Here’s what the ballot says:
3.1a RANKED CHOICE VOTING: IN THE EVENT THE MICHIGAN BUREAU OF ELECTIONS CERTIFIES THE PROCESS FOR THE USE OF RANKED CHOICE VOTING BEGINNING IN THE ELECTION OF 2023, OR SUCH SUBSEQUENT ODD YEAR ELECTION ONCE THE CONDITIONS OF A CERTIFIED PROCESS ARE SATISFIED, THE CITY COUNCIL SHALL BE ELECTED IN THE MANNER PRESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION.
It’s important to understand two things about this proposal:
First, the petition called for two changes. One is to shift from the current voting system to a ranked-choice system. (ELi would explain what this means, but we’re going to confess we don’t understand the language of the petition and what it really would mean in terms of the practice. RankMIVote has not answered all of ELi’s questions about this petition. Here are the questions RankMIVote did respond to.) The amendment petition also called for allowing City Council to call for a special election if a vacancy opens up on Council, but it did not provide details. Again, RankMIVote did not answer ELi’s questions about how this would work.
If this ballot proposal passes, as we understand it, these two charter amendments will have passed.
But the second thing to know is that both of these changes – ranked-choice voting and Council calling for a special election to fill a vacancy – are both currently not allowed under state law, according to City Attorney Tony Chubb. So, the changes would not take effect for a while, if ever.
The only people who so far appear openly campaigning FOR this proposal are the RankMIVote team. Some current Council members have said they are for ranked-choice voting but they have not said they are for this ballot proposal, which some have called “confusing.” Chubb told Council on Aug. 13, “I honestly think the intention of this whole petition initiative is confusion.”
ELi has also not encountered a lot of people openly campaigning AGAINST this proposal. A number of Council candidates at the League of Women Voters’ forum (see the video here) said they are in theory for ranked-choice voting. One (Erik Altmann) said the petition was extremely confusing.
At the Aug. 13 Council meeting, Interim City Clerk Marie Wicks called the drive by RankMIVote “more of maybe an awareness effort,” since it will not result in actual changes in voting in East Lansing anytime soon. She said she asked members of the group to attend the Council meeting to answer questions as Council decided how to word their proposal on the ballot, but they did not appear.
One more charter amendment proposal didn’t make it to the ballot, but it’s implicated on the ballot.
Council voted 3-2 to put on the ballot a proposal to change Council elections from even-numbered years to odd-numbered. But Governor Gretchen Whitmer did not allow this proposal to advance to the ballot. That’s because it turns out that, according to the Attorney General’s office, a majority of Council can make this change without permission of the voters.
Analysis by ELi shows this change from odd- to even-numbered years would substantially change what campaigning and voting in Council elections would look like.
Mayor Ron Bacon has said the current Council will not attempt to vote through this change.
Speaking at the Aug. 15 Council meeting, Bacon said, “The goal is to get people a chance to vote on that subject. It wouldn’t be something that Council would do by resolution, so that would probably fall to the next Council if it’s something they have interest in. So, it wouldn’t be anything we do by resolution. It was gonna be kind of a democratic sorting of that issue.”
But a majority of a new Council could consider such a change. To ELi’s knowledge, only one candidate, Rebecca Kasen, took a strong public stand on this issue before the governor’s decision.
Noting that the change to odd-numbered years would greatly increase the number and impact of student voters, Kasen said in public comment at the June 13 Council meeting, “When I first registered to vote in 2002, 21 years ago, the path to being an informed voter was different. There was information online but not as accessible as now. I needed to read a local newspaper. I needed to actually talk to the local candidates to find stuff out…But today it’s different. Every student has a smart phone. Nearly every candidate has a website, a social media presence. All the students need to do is a quick Google search and they can figure out, ‘Does this candidate match my values? What are the issues?’”
Because this change could be made by Council and because the issue gets at how people think about East Lansing politics, ELi will provide responses from candidates on where they stand on the issue and bring forward their positions in upcoming election coverage.