Minnesota should adopt ranked-choice voting for upcoming elections

Freda Veljkovich | St. Cloud

Some of us have been reading about a voting system used in the Twin Cities called ranked-choice voting (RCV), which lets people rank candidates from most to least preferred. I wish we could vote this way in our upcoming primary on Aug. 14 and then again in the November general election.

This Tuesday, we have a primary election with many qualified public servants battling to get on the November ballot. It's possible that, in the DFL primary, the candidates who prevail in the governor and attorney general races could have as little as 35 percent of the vote due to the number of candidates and our "first-past-the-post" system of elections. This means that a majority of voters will have voted for someone else!

Ranked-choice voting ensures that whoever wins has support from the majority (51 percent) of voters. Maine just successfully used RCV in their statewide primary in June, and I think we should have it here in Minnesota. Let's tell our elected officials it's time to look at ranked-choice voting for all of Minnesota.