The City Council governance committee approved a proposed ballot measure Tuesday that would move Denver’s municipal elections from May to April to address federal deadlines for mailing ballots to military and overseas voters.

The proposal will go to the full council for two final votes this month and, if passed, will be added to the November 2021 ballot for voter approval.

This change was made necessary after Colorado adopted a federal requirement for cities to provide ballots to overseas and military voters 45 days before elections. Currently, Denver’s municipal elections are followed by runoffs only 30 days later, with the top two candidates appearing on the runoff ballot.

Councilman Kevin Flynn, who sponsored the proposal, called it the “simple answer” to the deadline issue.

“It resolves the insufficient timeframes and, most importantly, it preserves the charter requirement that all elected officials except for the two at-large council members must be elected by ‘a majority of the votes cast,’ ” Flynn said. “The two-round runoff system is the only option that guarantees a winner will receive a majority of the vote.”

In addition to moving up the election, Clerk and Recorder Paul López also suggested that Denver could instead implement a ranked-choice voting model, eliminating the city’s current runoff structure, as a solution to the deadline issue.

Under ranked-choice voting, voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If no candidate gets the majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated and all ballots with that candidate selected first move to their second preference. This is repeated until a candidate has a majority.

Denver used the ranked-choice voting model in its municipal elections from 1916 until voters repealed it 1935, replacing it with the current runoff system.

“Our charter is very antiquated, that’s why something has to be done,” said López, Denver’s chief elections official. “I recommended two recommendations that are viable. We are able to do either with the same amount of excellence that our office is nationally renowned for.”

Flynn said the council cannot send both proposals to the ballot and, when voting between the two options, the majority of committee members voted to move up the election.

Five of the seven members of the clerk’s advisory committee also recommended moving the municipal election to April over implementing ranked-choice voting, Flynn said.

“There’s a timing problem,” Flynn said. “When you take your car to a shop because you need to replace the timing belt, you don’t want be sold an entire new car.” 

López said he considered other solutions to the deadline issue that were less popular in the public outreach process, including moving municipal elections to November, changing elections to a plurality model and changing to approval voting where voters could select as many candidates as they want.

The committee unanimously passed the proposal Tuesday. The full council will hold its first and second votes on the proposal on Aug. 23 and Aug. 30.