ELECTION REFORM
What's wrong with Collierville's elections?
Collierville's alderman and school board elections are "at-large" which means we don't have districts, and everyone in town votes for all positions.
In this system:
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we get a board that doesn't represent all of the people
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it is nearly impossible for minority candidates to win elections
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the politicians could be next-door neighbors
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the members have identical views
This is a helpful video about the downsides of various at-large systems in Texas.
(6 minutes and 20 secs)
What you need to know about Collierville elections...
1. Districts are better than at-large
Three of the six current members live just blocks from each other, and we have never had a mayor or alderman elected from the south side of town. Drawing voting districts will ensure that everyone, no matter where they live, will have good representation on the board.
2. This is not a NEW idea...
Collierville residents have been saying our at-large system needs to be changed for almost forty years. The article below was published on February 5, 1987 in the Commercial Appeal. Mr. Woodrow Brown, who is quoted in the article is still in Collierville and still advocating for election reform.
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At-large elections make it so that voters from minority groups cannot elect even a single representative. This is especially true for racial or ethnic minority groups, but it is also true for voters from rural areas or parts of town with slightly lower population levels--like the south and western portions of Collierville.
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"At-large elections in Shelby suburbs disliked by Blacks," Commercial Appeal February 5, 1987
3. The board knows about this, but they don't want to change.
Last year, members of Collierville NAACP along with former candidates and myself met with each alderman individually to explain why the at-large system is bad for democracy and representation. We suggested several ways they could fix the problem. None of them was willing to doing anything about it. Read more about our fight for fair elections in this article from the Commercial Appeal.
"We told the board of aldermen, 'It's not your fault, but you do have the power to change it. Now, if you refuse to change it, that is your fault.'" - Emily Fulmer
- Commercial Appeal, July 2021. Read the full article here.​
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4. Many small Tennessee towns have districts already
Here is a list of towns from largest to smallest population that have voting districts (except for Collierville)...along with the number of members (including mayor) that serve on their town councils.
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Franklin - 9
Jackson - 7
Hendersonville - 13
Spring Hill - 9
Collierville - 6
Cleveland - 8
Gallatin - 8
Columbia -7
Mt. Juliet - 5
Lebanon - 7
Martin - 7
Milan - 8
Greenbrier - 7
Monterey - 9
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Most boards and commissions have an odd number of members so that no votes result in a tie.
Collierville is large enough that we could add another alderman position to avoid this problem!
This is where we rank in terms of population, but we are the only town that doesn't have districts.
5. Not only is there no racial, ethnic, or geographic diversity, there is no diversity of THOUGHT when you have at-large elections like this.
I reviewed every single agenda item that our current board voted on since my opponent took office after the 2020 elections. There were 577 individual agenda items. Guess how many votes were unanimous? 574 of them. Only THREE VOTES were not unanimous.
That's 99.5% unanimous, lock-step agreement. Do you think that every resident of Collierville could agree 99.5% of the time? No. We wouldn't. (And that's okay!)
But you know what is almost more disturbing than this near 100% identical behavior from our current aldermen? MORE THAN HALF of those 574 agenda items were rubber stamped--no presentation, no discussion, no public input.