Ranked Choice Voting was used for the first time in Minneapolis, MN and passed by 52% in St Paul MN.  The Minneapolis elections did not bring any surprises, in large part because there were often so many challengers that they collectively did not threaten the incumbents.  This especially proved to be the case for the mayoral race, where the popularity of incumbent RT Rybak and the fact he had nine not-so-well known challengers kept the race non-competitive and failed to stir up significant voter-turnout for the off-season election.

And so it seems that giving voters multiple options is by no means a panacea, but the turnout was not that far down from four years ago and overall pretty good, given  the lack of a competitive mayoral race. 

Now, I have been sharing here in Mpls, MN about the idea of a "top three IRV" election, which would rely on a winner-doesn't-take-all open primary to whittle down the number of candidates in the general election to three candidates.  This would make it so that even a popular incumbent needs to campaign for reelection and more voters would study up the views and positions of all of the candidates in the general elections before voting.

Let us hope that a real dialogue begins on this crucial topic, particularly around the frame of the need for us to use both winner-take-all and winner-doesn't-take-all elections, possibly including the use of Top 3 IRV to revive the electoral college system for presidential elections....

dlw