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Ranked-choice voting bill advances in House

House Photography file photo
House Photography file photo

Lawmakers on a House elections panel lent their support Wednesday to legislation that could change how Minnesotans elect their local officials.

HF983, sponsored by Rep. Steve Elkins (DFL-Bloomington), would authorize local jurisdictions to use ranked-choice voting — also known as instant-runoff voting — in elections. Already, cities like Minneapolis (since 2009), St. Paul (since 2011) and St. Louis Park (since 2019) use ranked-choice voting to elect local officials, via amendments to their respective city charters.

Ranked-choice voting works like this: voters rank a number of candidates for a particular office in order of preference. Election results are then tabulated in rounds, eliminating candidates with the fewest votes until the number of candidates being chosen have received sufficient votes to be elected.

Bill to authorize ranked-choice voting heard in committee 2/19/20

HF983, as amended, was approved and re-referred to the House Government Operations Committee. Sen. Kent Eken (DFL-Twin Valley) sponsors a companion, SF2424, which awaits action by the Senate State Government Finance and Policy and Elections Committee.

The change in law would apply to cities, counties, towns and school districts, allowing those units of government to enact the change to ranked-choice.

Advocates of instant-runoff voting say it provides more choice for voters, promotes majority support for the eventual winner — since tabulating goes on until a candidate has achieved a majority of support — and discourages negative campaigning, since doing so may cost a candidate a voters’ second choice ranking.

Critics of the method, however, say it can confuse voters with long lists of candidates and that it makes ballots — and the counting of them — more expensive.


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