TO THE EDITOR:
Now that the regular elections are over, perhaps the mayor and Town Council can recommit to the logically inherent concept that elective offices are best elected by the citizens, by moving quickly to arrange a special filing and election so “we the people” can elect our new council member to the seat vacated by Bill Strom earlier this year.
The pre-election seat-filling discussion revolved around two alternatives under the law.
The “fifth-place candidate method” is based on an election, but only plausibly implies that whoever came in fifth in a four-seat election would also come in fifth in a five-seat election.
This is unlikely, because we who vote for all seats would have individually chosen our top five choices while in the actual four-seat election, we stopped at four.
With a fifth open-seat, I conservatively estimate that the “sixth” place candidate would have placed “fifth” by between 228 and 449 votes.
In the “Town Council interview and appointment method,” the Town Council ignores elections and appoints for its benefit as the Town Council rather than for us as citizens of Chapel Hill.
They could appoint someone who placed seventh or lower in the voting order, or an opportunist, or one who could potentially be sworn into office twice without being elected.
The legislature grants a wide range of legal options, some more democratic, ethical and logical than others.
I am requesting from our Town Council the best decision — one that logically upholds the inherent concept that citizens democratically elect candidates in an ethically straightforward election format.
Elizabeth Hartel Franklin
Chapel Hill
UNC ’93
