City Wins on Ranked Choice Voting!

As you can read here, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the City (and our allies in this case, FairVote Minnesota) on the question of the constitutionality of ranked choice voting. Their decision leaves no doubt: ranked choice voting is constitutional. Congratulations and thanks are due to our great City Attorney and her staff, who did a fantastic job defending the City's position. Jim Dorsey, who represented FairVote pro-bono, did wonderfully as well. My colleague Elizabeth Glidden, who chairs the Elections committee, also deserves quite a bit of credit for shepherding this difficult issue to this successful conclusion.



As I see it, the last impediment to using ranked choice voting in this year's election has been removed. I will be voting no on Council Member Barb Johnson's introduction of an ordinance declaring we're not ready to implement ranked choice voting this year. We will be ready, and we don't need two more weeks of confusion as to whether we're moving forward. I will be encouraging all of my colleagues to do the same. It's my hope that as of tomorrow, it will be clear to everyone in Minneapolis - voters, candidates, Elections staff and elected officials - that we will be using ranked choice voting this fall, and that our task from now until November is to get it right.