As you know, I oppose Ranked Choice Voting. I wouldn’t say I am strongly against it, I just don’t think it is a good way to pick HUMANS to serve us as elected officials. As I told someone recently, “It isn’t a chili cook-off.” I also have to disagree with this assumption below from the group pushing this silliness;
Here’s what can go wrong under the current election system for South Dakota municipalities. In the 2010 Sioux Falls mayoral election there were six candidates vying for this very important job. The first round votes were as follows:
Staggers (very conservative outsider) 24.9%
Huether (the only Democrat)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 24.7%
Vernon Brown (moderate mainstream) 20.0%
Pat Costello (moderate mainstream) 16.3%
Bill Peterson (moderate mainstream) 13.6%
Other                        .5%
49.9% of voters voted for a moderate mainstream candidate. But in the runoff two weeks later voters had to choose between a Democrat and a very conservative outsider. Many were unhappy with that choice and wished any of the mainstream candidates had made the runoff.Â
Ranked choice voting would have allowed voters to rank their preferences. There would have been no runoff and one of the moderates would likely have prevailed. Most Sioux Falls voters would have been satisfied with that result.Â
These people won’t even let my good friend Staggers rest in peace. Kermit was certainly a fiscal conservative, but he was very socially conscience and NOT an outsider, and why he got the most votes in the 1st round of voting. Saying Bill Peterson or Costello were moderates made me laugh (they were very Republican) While I do agree Vernon was a moderate at the time, I would say he leans more right than left. Either way, I think if Rank Choice would have been used, Huether still would have won with Kermit or Vernon coming in 2nd. I have crunched the numbers a few times and Huether wins each and every time.
We don’t need ranked choice. It confuses voters. What we need is GOOD candidates to run so they can attain 51% of the vote the first time around. We don’t need to fix how we vote, we need to fix who we are allowing to run. I think we could level that playing field by making city election campaigns publicly funded.