“It may well still have been Lewis Reed that got a majority if there was a runoff system,” Green said. “But just from a governance standpoint, being able to have that closure and being able to say over 50 percent of the voters in the city agree with the viewpoints of a particular candidate is important for our democracy.”

A petition to amend the charter to institute ranked-choice voting had actually been circulating around the city over the last year.

But there is a practical problem with ranked-choice voting.

“If more debate is generated as a result of the election in St. Louis City, for election administrators, the more pressing concern is, can the voting machines actually do it?” said Eric Fey, the Democratic St. Louis County director of elections and an international election observer and expert. “In the case of St. Louis and St. Louis County, the answer is no.”

That’s why the Show Me Integrity group decided to change its approach after the election this week. Among the top practical benefits of approval voting is that it can be instituted using the existing equipment in St. Louis.