Tag Archives: Cara Spencer

By Jim Ellis — Monday, Feb. 10, 2025

Mayor

Last week, the city of St. Louis held municipal elections under a new voting system. In 2021, they elected their mayor using Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) as an alternative to a plurality system with a runoff. For the 2025 elections, the election officials are experimenting again, this time with an alternative that appears fairer.

Obviously not satisfied with RCV, the city election officials chose the “Approval Voting” method. Under this system, people have as many votes to disperse as there are contenders.

In the St. Louis mayoral Democratic primary four candidates were on the ballot. Each voter could disperse four votes within the field, but without assigning multiple votes to any one candidate. Therefore, if strongly in favor of a particular candidate, the individual voter may issue one of his or her votes toward that contender and then not vote for any of the others. Doing so would have the force of giving the voter’s favored candidate three extra votes.

The Gateway City mayoral primary was held Tuesday, and the approval results found Mayor Tishaura Jones’ (D) re-election bid in serious trouble.

In the initial vote, Cara Spencer, a member of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen and Jones’ 2021 opponent, crushed the incumbent 68-33 percent.

The other two candidates, the city’s Recorder of Deeds Michael Butler and businessman Andrew Jones received 25 and 14 percent of the approval vote universe, which led to a cumulative total percentage of 140 percent. The high aggregate number shows that many voters were dispersing multiple votes throughout the candidate field.

Spencer and Mayor Jones will now advance into the April 8 general municipal election. In that vote, the electorate will return to casting their ballots in a traditional way: voting once for one candidate.

The Approval Voting method appears as a more equitable way of dispersing votes if the goal is to eliminate plurality victories. The major flaw in RCV is that some individuals cast votes in multiple rounds while others are limited to their initial vote.

Under RCV, the ballot caster would rank his or her preferences among the listed candidates. In the St. Louis Mayor’s example, an RCV system would have ordered the candidates with their first choice as “Ranked 1,” second choice “Ranked 2,” etc.

When all ballots are cast, the votes are then counted. If no contender receives majority support, the last place candidate is eliminated, and the election officials must find all of the ballots that ranked the last place finisher as the first choice. At that point, those voters who ranked the last place finisher first are isolated and just their second choices are added to the aggregate count. This process continues until one candidate finally reaches the 50 percent plateau through the benefit of extra voting.

The flaw in RCV is that it creates uneven planes and allows the extremist voters – those who vote for the least popular candidates and are often the most unrelenting voters on either side of the ideological spectrum – to provide the victory margin for a particular candidate.

While the RCV proponents say their system elects the candidate with the broadest support base, in reality it has proven to generally elect someone who commands lesser initial backing.

The Approval Voting method appears to correct the RCV flaw in that it would return all voters to equal standing. Therefore, eliminating plurality finishes with the Approval Voting method seems to accomplish the goal of creating a majority and where the candidate attracting the most actual votes, wins.