Voters in Minneapolis will have their second opportunity this November to rank candidates based on preference. But how many rankings should they get? The current number is three, but a City Council committee on Thursday took testimony about the implications of increasing it to five or more. The discussion initially arose during an elections committee meeting earlier this week focused on some technical changes to the ranked choice voting process and interpretations of voter intent. Ranked choice voting, which the city used during a less contentious election in 2009, takes into account voters’ rankings to choose a winner if a candidate does not get more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes. The candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated after each round – and their supporters’ votes are redistributed based on their rankings – until someone surpasses 50 percent.
FairVote Minnesota, which advocated the adoption of ranked choice voting, pushed for the extra ranking opportunities. Jeanne Massey, the group’s executive director, said more choices results in fewer “exhausted” ballots – ballots that contain only candidates that have already been dropped.
“Three is an artificial cap,” Massey said. “We know that the exhausted ballot pile grows when that limitation exists.”
Three is the most common number of rankings in the Bay Area of California, one of the only other areas in the country that uses ranked choice voting.
But making the change would also affect the design of the ballots, which might have to be extra pages, and voter education, which is going to be formalized in early June.
Full Article: Ranked choice, but how many? | StarTribune.com.
The Voting News
A News Service of the Verified Voting Foundation
