Minnesota is seeking to become the third state in the nation to utilize ranked-choice voting (RCV) for state and federal elections, following in the steps of Alaska and Maine.
While five cities in the Gopher state already use RCV for municipal elections — Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Bloomington, Saint Louis Park, and Minnetonka — Minnesota Senator Kelly Morrison has introduced a bill that would require RCV for all state and federal elections. While the bill is currently in committee, it has a companion in the Minnesota House that’s waiting for a hearing.
RCV requires voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, and his votes are redistributed to whichever candidate his voters ranked as their second choice. This process continues until one candidate clears 50 percent.
As one might imagine, this process is riddled with errors. Not only do election results take weeks or even months to tabulate, but sometimes the wrong candidate wins. In an Oakland school board race, for example, election officials announced — two months after the fact — that they got the count wrong. The rightful winner is now suing for his seat.
Proponents of RCV argue that it rewards moderate, centrist politicians, as candidates have to appeal to a wider pool of constituents to earn their 2nd or 3rd rankings. What this really means, as a local Minnesotan paper describes, is that Republicans are pushed out for Democrats.
