By Paul Gunderson
Carol Becker writes in the Minneapolis Times, October 5, 2025, “(Minneapolis needs) a voting system that is easy, and geared to least-engaged voters, not the most engaged.” I couldn’t agree more and am pleased that we have such a system with Ranked Choice Voting.
Minneapolis’ previous electoral process, rejected by its citizens when they chose Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in 2006, asks voters to engage up to three times in selecting their representatives. First, voters are afforded the opportunity to vote in a primary election or sit through an excruciatingly long and sometimes confusing party endorsement caucus. Because many voters often choose to do neither, a small percentage of voters, often the true believers from the fringes, make these early decisions. How often have our neighbors said to us, “Is this the best the parties can do? Why do we have to choose between these two undesirable candidates?” And so, we go to the general election polls having to choose between such candidates. To make matters worse, in this traditional electoral system, if none of the candidates gets the required 50%+1 in the general election, voters are asked to cast a third and final ballot in a runoff election. This can be no one’s idea of easy. The proof of the burdensomeness of this approach is the small number of people who vote in either the primary or the runoff.
Becker writes RCV doesn’t make sense for Minneapolis because we are, unlike France, essentially a one-party city. There is no question about the strength of the DFL in Minneapolis (perhaps the Republican party needs to do a better job of listening to the electorate), but that assumes all Democrats vote in lockstep which is far from the case. Choice is choice, whether it is between scores of parties and platforms, as in France, or between the various factions, platforms and positions within a fractured Democratic party. Indeed, a goal of the RCV movement is to reduce the power of the two political parties and Becker seems baffled that the DFL would support such a process. I say bravo to the DFL for not fearing an electoral process that gives voters a greater voice, and a simpler process, even if it may reduce the party’s influence.
Becker seems to argue against RCV because of the source of the money supporting it. Like Becker, and probably most readers, I am concerned about the huge amounts of money spent on our elections. That said, the amount of money, or its source, does not necessarily negate the value of an idea. If that were the case, one could argue that banning RCV is a bad idea because the right-leaning Heritage Foundation is a strong supporter of ballot initiatives designed to ban it. To be fair, nationally there is currently more money and more donors (most are small grass roots donors) supporting RCV than there are for banning it. That’s because supporters are trying to change a system that has been in place for years and has major party backing in most places. Does anyone doubt that once more states adopt RCV we will see huge amounts of money coming from rich, right-leaning donors? Let’s debate the value of RCV on its merits.
Becker claims RCV “pushes voters to vote for three (candidates).” This is untrue. In RCV you can vote for just one candidate if you choose, but why would you do that and give up your voice – disenfranchise yourself – if your first choice finishes low in the voting and no other candidate achieves the 50%+1 threshold. She also writes that RCV “leads you to vote for a second or third choice, no matter how flakey they are.” Excuse me, voters are not stupid. They will not vote for flakey candidates just to fill all the boxes; they will rank the candidates they either prefer or can live with. The flakey ones get no votes – except, perhaps, from flakey voters and that is their right.
Becker writes that candidates can “game the system” with RCV. To make her point she uses a Park District election in which a third candidate entered the race that was neck-and-neck between the other two candidates. This third candidate was a supporter of better ball fields. A leading contender “partnered” with him saying if he encouraged his supporters to give her their second-choice votes, and if she won, she would work to get better ball fields, which is how this story turned out. Wonderful. This is not gaming the system. Candidates working together and suggesting that their supporters vote for another “partner” candidate as a second choice has a tendency of moving these candidates closer together, and often (not always) closer to the middle. Compromise, or working together, in the legislative process is a good thing; working collaboratively in the electoral process can be a good thing, as well.
A fair concern of Becker’s is the difficulty voters encounter when researching all the candidates running for office. Becker writes “(with RCV) to properly do ranking you need to spend hours doing your research.” Researching 15 candidates running for mayor is daunting, but it is no less daunting in a conventional election with 15 people running in the primary. One either takes the time to understand the issues and candidate positions, or one does not – or one may still choose to let a party endorsement make the decision for them. Either way, each citizen approaches voting in the way that works for them.
No electoral system is perfect but Ranked Choice Voting comes close. I happen to live in both Minnesota and Georgia; both states could benefit from RCV. Minnesota awards the office to the candidate with the most votes in the general election even if he/she secures less than 50% of the vote. While this eliminates the need for a runoff election, it allows a candidate without a clear mandate to govern. RCV solves that problem by counting the second and/or third choices of some voters until a candidate secures the needed 50%+1. While not all those voters picked the winning candidate as their number one choice, all of them, through their ranked votes, have said they can live with him/her as their leader. This is much better than having someone who garnered only 37% of the votes becoming governor. On the other hand, Georgia does require the winning candidate to secure a majority of votes, often necessitating a runoff election. This was the case in the special US Senate election of 2022. The runoff election between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker not only required voters to venture out for a third time, it cost the state $70M to execute! A colossal waste of money that would have been avoided had RCV been in place.
Ranked Choice Voting reduces the expense of the election process; it is less time-burdensome by asking voters to go to the polls only once; and it selects the candidate who has the support of the majority of the broad electorate. It is the right system for Minneapolis. Hopefully it will be Minnesota’s system someday.
Paul Gunderson, Downtown Minneapolis
Fair is fair, so you can be forgiven for not dealing with the biggest flaw in RCV (one I think should be seen as fatal), because it was not central to Carol Becker’s analysis, and you were responding to that. But any complete analysis should include that RCV severely DIS-incentivizes candidates from stating their positions and proposed policies clearly, because it is of central importance not to give the supporters of ANY opponent a reason to NOT list you as #2 or #3.
Do the following experiment. Pick any multi-candidate office. Mayor will do, but if you want to choose any other, that will work, too. Without first visiting their campaign web sites, make a list based on whatever you know from any other information sources of how VIABLE you think each candidate is. So, for Mayor, maybe you would put two, or three, or four, or perhaps even five above all the others, in one order or another. “Viability” only – try to keep your own wants and preferences out of it.
NOW, go look at all of their websites. What you will find is that the most viable candidates have the least specifics on their sites. It has been this way since we adopted RCV in Minneapolis. Try not to be fooled by all the “glitter” on the website – the quality of the graphics, the effectiveness of the layout. That’s NOT what to look for. Pick a few issues that really matter to you and ask, for each candidate, “Does this website tell me in detail what this candidate really wants to DO about this issue?” Try not to give “extra credit” to a candidate whose position you may know (or think you know). Or for “platitudes”. Does the candidate clearly state courses of action? What is that candidate SAYING to someone coming to them “cold”? Also, look at the “no one thinks they’re viable” candidates. They won’t ALL have specifics. Some of them, after all, are not viable because they truly are nothing-burgers. But SOME of them will have specifics. None of the truly viable candidates will, and if you rank-ordered their viability well and fairly, you will find that the most viable have the fewest specifics.
This is less time consuming than it sounds. You will quickly get my point.
Mind you, you may still want to vote for “your candidate” if you already have one. I have learned not to “ding” candidates for “web-site obfuscation”. But it, and its cousins “literature piece obfuscation”, “debate obfuscation”, etc., are real problems, and RCV has made them worse than they ever were before.