For Immediate Release: November 4, 2009

Minneapolis’ Inaugural Use of Ranked Choice Voting Goes Smoothly

MINNEAPOLIS – (November 4, 2009) – Fair Vote Minnesota today called Minneapolis’ inaugural use of Ranked Choice Voting a great success, saying it creates “a model for how other Minnesota cities can successfully implement Ranked Choice Voting.”

“The City of Minneapolis did a great job preparing for today’s election in terms of its own processes and in terms of voter education,” said Jeanne Massey, executive director of FairVote Minnesota. “The result appears to have been a smooth, trouble-free election. Most voters came to the polls knowing what to do and – when there were questions – election judges were prepared to help as needed. According to initial reports, we saw very few spoiled ballots and we have anecdotal reports indicating voters liked the new voting method. We’ll look forward to the full report of the City Election Department, but it appears that Minneapolis has established a successful model for Saint Paul and hopefully other Minnesota cities to emulate when implementing Ranked Choice Voting.

Yesterday, Saint Paul voters also passed a ballot question to allow for the use of Ranked Choice Voting and it will soon join Minneapolis in using this new voting system for their municipal elections.

Massey noted that the pending hand count was a part of the City’s plan for elections. While many of the races resulted in winners according to the initial machine tally of first choice rankings, the City has said that these results are preliminary and will be verified as part of the hand count process. The hand count gets underway today and will provide official results for all races.

“This is exactly how the system was designed to work this year, ” Massey said. “The City has a very thorough process in place that will be accurate, thorough and transparent. We expect the next phase of the process to go as smoothly as today’s.”

Ranked Choice Voting or RCV (also known as Instant Runoff Voting), is a tested, accepted and implementable system by which voters rank candidates in order of preference, ensuring majority winners in single-winner races where there are more than two candidates on the ballot. Under RCV, voters cast their vote for their favorite candidate knowing that if no candidate gathers a majority of votes in the first round of counting their votes can count toward their second choice. Votes cast for the less popular candidates are not "wasted", but rather redistributed to more popular candidates, based on the voters' second choices, until one candidate emerges with a majority of votes.

RCV is already in use in San Francisco and more than a half a dozen other jurisdictions around the United States and in democracies such as Ireland and Australia.

FairVote Minnesota was founded in 1996 to work for better democracy through public education and advocating progressive voting systems that lead to greater competitiveness, better representation and more participation.