McMinnville officials will be considering a request to require all city property rights voters to cast their city-election ballots by mail.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen meets this Tuesday, July 26, at 7 p.m. Among the items of business under consideration is a written request by Warren County election administrator Susie Davenport for the city to pass an ordinance that would require all its property rights voters to vote by mail.

A property rights voter is: one who does not live in the city, but votes in a city election due to the ownership of real property in the city; is allowed by City Charter; and must register specifically as a property rights voters.

There are currently 174 individuals considered to be city property rights voters.

A municipality may, by ordinance, mandate that all nonresident property owners vote only by absentee mail-in ballot.

Former election administrator Donna Smith made the same request of the city board in 2014. They rejected it with a vote of 4-2. Jimmy Haley, Ben Newman, Rick Barnes, and Ken Smith voted against it. Jimmy Bonner and Mike Neal voted in favor. Billy Wood abstained.

Davenport’s request will be considered by Mayor Ryle Chastain, Vice Mayor Everett Brock and Aldermen Rachel Kirby, Zach Sutton, Steve Harvey, Stacey Harvey and Sally Brock.

She mirrored the reasons offered by Smith in 2014: It will make record keeping cleaner and easier when doing counts and recording daily numbers both during Early Voting and Election Day.

It will be much less expensive.

It will not require a separate computer system at each Early Voting Site. All property rights voters’ registrations must be maintained in a separate database.

It will not require a separate activation to be programmed on voting machines.

All property rights voters currently must go to one voting location for each of the four municipalities in Warren County unless voting early – this will eliminate that requirement for them.

In order to make this change, the ordinance must be filed no later than 60 days before the election. If the ordinance is adopted, all nonresident property owners must vote by absentee by-mail ballot and may not vote in person during the early voting period or on Election Day. Unless the ordinance is repealed prior to an election, this voting process applies to each subsequent municipal election.