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Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series on the City Council’s planning efforts.

During their recent work session, City Councilmembers discussed the options for changes to the city’s general election process, with a focus on the potential to move the election from May to November and the idea that all council candidates would qualify by ward but run at large.

Currently there are two at-large positions in the Morristown council.

No decisions were made at the work session – councilmembers instead requested that City Administrator Tony Cox schedule a public forum for 5 p.m. Aug. 29 in Council Chambers at the City Center.

Signed by Gov. Bill Lee in May of this year, HBO817 prohibits members of local governing bodies to be elected through a procedure that requires candidates to be nominated from a district and elected at large, which is how Morristown City elections have been conducted.

“I believe we all see the need to move the elections to November, I don’t think there’s been disagreement on that,” Morristown Mayor Gary Chesney said. “The question is, do we allow voters to keep voting for all of us or do we want to take away the opportunity for voters to elect half of the council, that’s what this change is.”

Councilmember Tommy Pedigo said, “The problem we’ve got to realize is you could potentially end up with all city council members living on the same street.”

After responding that the voters would be the ones to decide, Chesney said, “I think what we have to debate is what is the value of a zone? I don’t think we’ve ever said, ‘Well, we need to do something for Ward 1 or Ward 4 or Ward 3.’ That’s why the county commission bogs down, because what they say is, ‘My district needs this, or my district needs that’ and what it results in is gridlock: everybody voting or not voting because they’re looking out for themselves. And what we do is look out for the entire city – because we’re answerable to the entire city.”

Pedigo said, “What we do now is that we elect by districts, or by wards, however we call it, but everybody in the city elects those people.”

Chesney responded, “We don’t elect by district. To get qualified, four of us have to live in a ward. The theory is that you’re representing the ward you live in more than you’re representing others. My experience, even after living here forever, it’s never been an issue with City Council.”

Cox explained the origins of HB0817.

“What brought the bill about is Knoxville. Knoxville has a primary … they nominate, get on the ballet by Ward,” he said. “The ward would go through the election process and select candidates that would then be in a general election, voted city-wide. The concern they had was that someone who was elected in a ward could be turned down when the city-wide election came about.”

One idea discussed was to eliminate wards and elect three councilmembers at large every other election cycle. A sample result of this idea would be that Bob Garrett, Kay Senter and Tommy Pedigo would run as candidates in the November election cycle after May 2025.

The remaining candidates, including Chesney, would run in the November election cycle after May 2027.

“You cannot by law reduce a member’s term, but you can lengthen it,” Chesney said. “What you would do is anybody in the city who wants to run for the three council seats could run. And yeah, you could have three next-door neighbors decide to run, but that’s probably not going to happen. What happens is, people from around the city would run. You take the top three (by number of votes) and that’s who your council members are.”

Garrett said, “What you’re trying to do is get as many people in one ward to vote as possible.”

“That would happen if we move it to November, because we had barely 10 percent that voted in the mayoral race in May,” Chesney said. “We’ll have a more representative council elected by more people in the city, which is really what democracy is.”

Chesney added that he has spoken to members of two Morristown civic clubs and polled their responses to moving the general election to November, with positive responses.

“The response with doing away with wards: ‘That sounds reasonable, but we need to think about it.’ I think we need to get some (public) feedback,” Chesney said.

After confirming there was a consensus among councilmembers to consider moving the general elections to November, Cox added another topic to the discussion.

“One other thing you need to consider if you move the day of your election is the impact it will have on those who vote by property rights as opposed to residency. If you go to the polls and you’re already voting for president in the precinct you live in and you’re also going to be voting by property rights in the city, that creates a problem for the election commission,” Cox said.

Cox said an option might be an absentee ballot for property rights voters.

“There is not a reasonable way for the election commission to create all the potential ballots, including whether you’re a property owner going into the polls to vote for president. You may want to look at property rights voters and how to deal with that and talk with the election commission.”

The election commission is intent on speaking with councilmembers about the issue, according to Cox.

Election commission concerns with administering the votes of non-city residents who own city property, the property rights voters, would be the necessity to create a number of additional ballots.

“It’s a big change,” Cox said. “We can work through those small details as we go forward, but you all need to figure out if you’re going to run wards and what time of year that you’re going to do it.”

Garrett summed up his feelings on the subject: “One thing we do know is that 90 percent of the registered voters don’t give a d— who’s running. They didn’t vote.”

The cost of the May general election was just over $25,000, with a result of about 1,200 votes cast.

“We know this is a difficult, complex decision,” Cox said with the caveat that the decision to move the general election to November would be best made within this year’s state legislative session, which would require the Council to amend and approve the Charter by the council’s second meeting in September.

City Attorney Lauren Carroll told councilmembers that – although accepting property rights voters would be part of the Charter – any decision regarding property rights voters being required to use absentee ballots would not be part of the Charter.

That particular requirement would be included in an ordinance voted on by councilmembers in a regular council session.

More discussions will take place by council members prior to the public roundtable scheduled for Aug. 29. There is a work session scheduled for the next council meeting, a week from August 7.

“With the preliminary discussions we had, there are several ways you can go. One, you don’t have to rely on property rights voters. You could in your Charter say, ‘In order to vote, you have to be a resident of the city, be registered to vote in the city.’ If you want to move forward in maintaining property rights – and there are certain qualifications about the number of people who can share those voting rights – the election commission would ask that those property rights owners would be required to do would be an absentee-type vote,” Cox said.

Councilmember Joseph Senter explained that he was required by the election commission to offer proof that county residents who signed his petition to run for office in the May election did own city property, in order to for him to qualify as a candidate – “I was up there a long time for that,” he said.

Chesney said, “Did they verify it?”

Senter, replied, “Yes.”