Utility Regulators

Almost every household decision about energy — what a kilowatt-hour costs, whether a utility may build a gas plant or retire a coal one, who pays for storm damage or a transmission line — runs through a small state board that most voters have never heard of. In eleven states, the people on that board are elected. In two more, the legislature picks them. Everywhere else, they are appointed. These differences decide whether voters choose commissioners directly, which voters take part in each election, and which officials hold the appointing power. And the ballot itself can be misleading about which of those you are looking at.

What These Boards Actually Do

A state utility commission sets the rates that regulated monopoly utilities may charge. When a power company wants to raise bills, build a plant, or recover the cost of a hurricane, it files a case with the commission, and the commission decides — in a quasi-judicial proceeding, with evidence and testimony, much closer to a court than to a legislature. Most also regulate natural gas distribution, water and sewer utilities, and some telecommunications.

Commissions are small, typically three to five members serving four- to six-year terms. That size is the point worth holding onto: in a three-member commission, two people decide. Very few offices in American government combine this little visibility with this much direct effect on household costs.

Who Picks Them

Three categories, defined carefully, because the shorthand misleads. Voter-elected: chosen on a statewide or district ballot. Legislature-elected: South Carolina and Virginia, whose legislatures formally elect the commission. Appointed, including shared appointments: everywhere else.

That last category is not a synonym for "the governor picks them." The appointing power is often divided. North Carolina splits five seats among the governor, the state treasurer and the General Assembly. Tennessee divides seven among the governor, the lieutenant governor and the House speaker, who jointly choose the seventh. Legislators help select commissioners in more than two states; what sets South Carolina and Virginia apart is that their legislatures elect them outright.

Even "appointed" conceals real variety. Alaska requires confirmation by the full legislature sitting in joint session. New Hampshire uses its Executive Council rather than the senate. Indiana and Ohio confine the governor to a shortlist produced by a statutory nominating body — Ohio's council sends four names per vacancy. Vermont screens candidates like judges, with the chair confirmed "in the manner of a Superior judge." Massachusetts is the outlier at the other end: its commissioners are appointed by the secretary of energy and environmental affairs with the governor's approval, and face no legislative confirmation.

The Ballot Does Not Tell You Who Votes

A district number printed on a ballot does not mean only that district votes.

In Louisiana, the ballot line reads "PSC, District 1," and only voters in that district cast a ballot for it. Five single-member districts, five commissioners, ordinary district representation.

In Georgia, the ballot line reads "PSC — District 3," and every voter in the state votes on it. Georgia commissioners must reside in one of five districts, but they are elected statewide. The statute is explicit: members "shall be required to be residents of one of five Public Service Commission Districts … but each member of the commission shall be elected state wide by the qualified voters of this state."

The district number alone does not tell a voter whether the election is districtwide or statewide. The difference determines whether a commissioner is elected by voters in one district or by the whole state, and it has been litigated precisely because it matters that much.

Montana, Mississippi and Nebraska use true districts like Louisiana. Georgia is alone in the residency-only arrangement.

Texas Elects Its Oil and Gas Regulator, Not Its Electric One

Texas is the sharpest illustration that "the energy regulator" is not one office. The Railroad Commission of Texas is elected statewide, and despite the name it has not regulated railroads in decades — it regulates oil and gas production, pipelines, and gas utilities. Electricity is the province of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, whose members are appointed by the governor.

So a Texan who votes for a Railroad Commissioner is voting on oil and gas policy, not on their electric rates. It is the reason careful counts of "states that elect their public utility commission" often omit Texas entirely, and the reason counts of "states that elect an energy regulator" include it. Both are defensible; they are answering different questions.

The split is the norm rather than the exception. In nearly every state, oil and gas production sits with another agency. Kansas and Oklahoma combine electric utility regulation and oil-and-gas conservation in one commission; most states divide those functions.

Nebraska is the other state where the elected body is not the electric-rate regulator. Nebraska is served entirely by publicly owned power, and retail electric rates are set by the boards and councils that run those utilities - public power district directors, city councils and village boards - not by the elected Public Service Commission, which regulates natural gas, telecommunications, pipelines and other services.

The Office Has No Common Name

There is no standard title, which makes these bodies unusually hard to track across states. They are called the Public Service Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Corporation Commission, the Railroad Commission, the Board of Public Utilities, the Department of Public Utilities, the Commerce Commission, and the Regulatory Commission, among others.

The names also change. Iowa's became the Iowa Utilities Commission in 2024; Vermont's Public Service Board became the Public Utility Commission in 2017. A reader — or a database — keying on the name alone will miss both the renames and, more dangerously, a state that quietly changed how the job is filled while keeping the name.

How to Read These Races on Your Ballot

Among the states that elect commissioners, the ballot takes at least six distinct forms:

What the ballot shows	Who votes	States
Office title only, no number	Whole state, one seat at a time	Texas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota
"Vote for not more than two"	Whole state, several seats in one contest	Arizona
A numbered or named district	Only that district	Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska
A numbered district	The whole state — the district is a residency rule	Georgia
A numbered "Place"	Whole state; the number is printed and real	Alabama
Two contests for one body, one marked "Unexpired Term"	Whole state, both on the same day	North Dakota in 2026

A voter in Arizona choosing two names from one list, and a voter in Louisiana choosing one name in one district, are participating in structurally different elections for the same kind of office.

Alabama Is Changing Systems Right Now

Alabama's two 2026 contests are statewide elections by numbered place, as they have been for decades. But a 2026 law, the Power to the People Act, rebuilds the commission underneath them. It expands the Public Service Commission from three members to seven, and shifts elections from statewide to congressional districts.

The transition is staged. The governor appointed four additional commissioners in 2026, taking office in January 2027 — two to two-year terms and two to four-year terms — each chosen from lists of three names submitted jointly by legislative leaders, one pair of lists from the majority side and one from the minority. Elections by congressional district begin in 2028, continue in 2030, and the transition completes with the terms beginning in January 2033.

It is a useful reminder that these arrangements are not fixed. A reader checking Alabama in 2027 will find a seven-member commission that in 2026 had three, and a district map where there was none.

When Selection Systems and Calendars Change

The direction of travel has been away from elections, and the changes are easy to miss because the institutions keep their names.

New Mexico is the cleanest example. Voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2020 that, effective 2023, replaced five district-elected commissioners with three appointed by the governor from a nominating committee's list. The body is still called the Public Regulation Commission. Nothing about the name signals that New Mexicans no longer vote for it.

Florida elected three commissioners statewide until the late 1970s, and Tennessee's elected Public Service Commission was abolished in the mid-1990s and replaced with an appointed body. Historical election results for both are real; they simply stop.

Georgia is the opposite case — a state that kept elections but did not hold them. A federal court enjoined Georgia's statewide at-large system, and the state held no Public Service Commission elections in 2022 or 2024 while the litigation ran. The Eleventh Circuit reversed, the Supreme Court declined to take the case, and the legislature rebuilt the election calendar, Elections resumed in 2025, when two seats were filled at a special election - one for a single-year term covering 2026, which is why that seat returns to the ballot again this year. The gap in Georgia's record reflects the litigation and the statutory schedule that followed it, not an oversight.

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Most elected commissions stagger their terms, so an election usually fills only some seats. But a single race can decide a majority: a five-member commission split three to two becomes two to three when one seat changes hands. Mississippi is the exception to staggering - all three of its commissioners are elected in the same cycle. What is at stake in any given year depends on the commission's existing composition and which seats are up, not on its size. The commissioners whose terms continue matter as much as the ones on the ballot.