Instant Runoff Voting Study Task Force

Since Monday, my office, (meaning my hard working and amazing Policy Aide, Robin Garwood and my dependable, competent Associate, Nancy Olsen) has been scrambling to set up a task force to study Instant Runoff Voting.

The Better Ballot Campaign and FairVote Minnesota (full disclosure: I was a founding member of FairVote, and Robin is on its board currently) are pushing to put IRV on the ballot in Minneapolis this fall. One of the important steps in the process was to put together a task force representing all institutional stakeholders to study the viability of IRV in Minneapolis and recommend whether or not to proceed. My colleague and fellow IRV advocate Scott Benson moved a resolution creating this task force which passed the full council on March 10th.

Then the task force sort of fell through the cracks until Monday, when FairVote President Tony Solgard asked our office what progress had been made. Turns out the task force was to have been convened and chaired by the single Council Member who volunteered to serve on it. But no one had taken this step.

So I did. I volunteered to chair the task force (and therefore volunteered my aide Robin and associate Nancy to convene it). And since then the scramble has been on. I’ll post from time to time about this ongoing process.

Our first report back to the council is due at the April 25 meeting of the Intergovernmental Relations committee.