Wichita City Council members have voted unanimously to establish a new process for filling a Council vacancy that occurs before a term expires.

The previous process had a District Advisory Board nominating four or five candidates and submitting them to the Council.  The Council would then vote at their next two consecutive meetings.  If a candidate is not chosen by a majority after five ballots during either of those two meetings, the vacancy would be filled by a coin toss.

Difficulties in filling a Council vacancy in December, 2020 led to changes in the process, plus there are concerns about the legality of a coin toss.   The new process would set up a ranked voting process at the District Advisory Board, where DAB members would rank candidates by preference, one through five.   Each first place vote would count as five points, each second place vote would count as four points, a third place vote would count as three points, fourth place would be two points, and a fifth place vote would be one point.   The points would be totaled for a cumulative rank of the nominated candidates.

After the DAB has submitted a list of candidates, the Council would vote using the same ranked voting process.  If the vacancy is not filled, the Council would consider the vacancy at its next two meetings, and if it still isn’t filled after that, the deadlock would be broken by a coin toss between the two candidates with the highest cumulative rank.   Assistant city attorney Nate Johnson said layers were added to the process to prevent the possibility of a coin toss.