A pair of DFL lawmakers who fell short last year of gaining enough support in the legislature to turn Minnesota into a ranked-choice voting state aren’t giving up on their goal. They’ve just scaled back their efforts to more incremental steps.
On Wednesday, a committee in the state House approved a bill that would make it easier for cities across the state to implement ranked-choice voting as a method of electing local representation.
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The election process known as ranked choice voting isn’t compatible with one of the oldest state constitutions in America, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, says.
Tong released an 11-page legal opinion Tuesday stating that the system of voting, which allows voters to rank their choices of candidates, violates at least two standing provisions of the Connecticut Constitution. The state’s attorney general said it was a “close call,” however.
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The American Legislative Exchange Council held their national annual conference in Scottsdale last week, which included a pre-session for legislators with the Honest Elections Project (HEP). HEP is focusing on three issues relating to elections currently, and is proposing draft model legislation that legislators can introduce on a few issues. One is Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), which is gearing up to be a huge fight on the 2024 ballot in Arizona.
Three progressive groups are pushing RCV in Arizona. However, the Arizona Legislature has also referred a proposition to the ballot in 2024 that would stop RCV. HEP has extensively looked into how RCV works, and determined that it ends up putting far left Democrats into office, not moderates as some would expect. HEP’s fact sheet went over several races where it was used and showed how it facilitates this, undermining the Constitution’s principle of one person, one vote.
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U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney recently praised Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV), lauding it respectively as “mesmerizing…we should do it” and “a superior way to proceed.” But the two lawmakers are wrong.
Their statements might ring true if they understood they are endorsing a system that encourages fringe candidates and skews election outcomes.
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As ranked-choice voting gains momentum, election integrity advocates are fighting back over what the call a “confusing” voting system that they say would give the left more power.
Ranked-choice voting is an election process being introduced across the country, amid pushback from some states, including efforts to ban it.
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Three Pennsylvania House Democrats this week proposed allowing localities to adopt ranked-choice voting (RCV) in municipal elections.
Under such a system, in an election with more than two candidates for one office, voters would rank their options rather than choose just one.
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A well-funded push to make Minnesota a ranked choice voting state appears to have run out of steam — at least this session at the Minnesota Legislature.
On Monday, State Sen. Jim Carlson, DFL-Eagan, told his colleagues in the Senate Elections Committee that a bill introduced last month that would implement ranked choice voting for statewide and legislative races by 2026 “is much more complicated than we originally thought.”
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A Democrat lawmaker carrying a bill that would make Minnesota only the third state in the nation to adopt statewide ranked choice voting in its elections said he’s confident he will garner support from Republicans.
That’s despite the fact that Republicans in a House Elections Committee on Friday told Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope, that his RCV bill has no support from among the 64 Republican members of the House of Representatives.
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Despite the fact that few people attended a ranked choice voting press conference at the Minnesota Capitol on Thursday, DFL legislators and paid RCV advocates expressed enthusiasm about the prospect of passing a bill that would implement their favored system of determining representation in the legislature and for statewide office.
State Sen. Kelly Morrison, DFL-Deephaven, and State Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope, have introduced a bill they’re calling the “Protect and Advance Democracy Act” that would make Minnesota a ranked choice voting state by 2026.
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Americans want honest, straightforward and fair elections that they can trust. Regardless of whether candidates win or lose, voters deserve far better than the incompetence, mismanagement and multi-week delays in counting votes that we’re seeing in so many states today. So, at a time when trust in elections is at an all-time low, why are some establishment Republicans teaming up with Democrats to push a complex, confusing and painfully slow method of voting in America?
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A group of Bloomington residents have filed a petition with the city clerk to initiate the process of repealing ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the city.
Voters in Minnesota’s fourth-largest city voted in favor of transitioning to the ranked-choice voting system in November 2020. The measure passed by two percentage points, but turnout was reportedly above 85%.
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