When do you want to vote for mayor? The Sioux Falls City Council has to decide soon when the 2026 municipal election will take place. State law changed this year requiring city and school elections to align with either the June primary election or the November general election. So far, councilors have advanced ordinances that would accommodate either option, but they'll have to settle on one or the other when they come to second reading at the July 8 meeting.
That means the next few weeks is the ideal time to reach out to your councilors and let them know what you prefer. It's also worth noting here that the council is only determining the date for the 2026 municipal election, and for elections moving forward, the public will ultimately have to vote to amend the city charter.
Should Sioux Falls have fewer runoffs? The other big question City Council wrestled with last night was a look at what percentage of the vote should be required for someone to win a council seat. Right now, the requirement is that someone must receive at least 50% of the vote to win, which means when there are more than two candidates in any given race, it can be tricky for one person to earn that much of the vote – which means, often, races are settled in a run-off election three weeks after the initial election.
Councilors advanced a proposal to reduce the necessary percentage to win from 50% to 35% of the vote. That's essentially what the city ordinance was for decades before it was changed from plurality to majority in 2017.
What happens next? This proposal now moves to a second reading July 8.