Ranked Choice Voting (RCV): RCV is moving forward in so many of our cities and states nationwide. It is not a good thing as it’s rigging the system! Locally in the Twin Cities, Minnetonka City Council unanimously voted to place a charter amendment for RCV voting on the November ballot. Others on the call mentioned that other local cities are contemplating the idea of RCV.

RCV explained in 1 min Ballotpedia video: https://youtu.be/5sVpLxGKd3Q.

A good summary is shown on The Heritage Foundation website: “You will not believe what “reformers” have devised to tinker with and manipulate our elections. It is called ranked-choice voting (or “instant runoff voting”)—but it is really a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win elections. In the end, it is all about political power, not about what is best for the American people and for preserving our great republic. So-called reformers want to change process rules so they can manipulate election outcomes to obtain power.”

To read further go to https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/ranked-choice-voting-bad-choice. The key points of this article are:

  1. Ranked-choice voting is a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win.
  2. It obscures true debates and issue-driven dialogs among candidates and eliminates genuine binary choices between two top-tier candidates.
  3. It also disenfranchises voters, because ballots that do not include the two ultimate finalists are cast aside to manufacture a faux majority for the winner.

You can find a summary of rank-choice voting in the local paper Sun Sailor: “Ranked-choice voting eliminates the need for a primary because voters can rank candidates in order of preference. If a candidate reaches a majority of the votes cast that candidate is the winner, but if they do not, the candidate with the least first-choice votes is eliminated and another round of counting takes place to divvy up the remaining votes based on their ranking until a majority is reached. Subsequent rounds can take place after the second round of tallying votes.” To read further: https://www.hometownsource.com/sun_sailor/community/minnetonka/ranked-choice-voting-moves-to-the-minnetonka-charter-commission-for-review/article_4937aa8a-af3b-11ea-8150-270d33b07e2f.html.

Unfortunately what the article does not include is some of the problems with rank-choice voting.  So often it results in the last candidate you want to be elected. It may save a little money but the results is that  you too often elect the wrong candidate. It is another proposal that sounds good on the surface until you dig a little deeper to uncover some of the issues behind it.