Today is election day for Mayor of Minneapolis and there are thirty-five candidates and the system to be used to elect one of them is called Ranked Choice. This means you are asked to vote for your top three candidates, and that is why there are thirty-five candidates. Of course, a very small fee and simple candidate registration system also helped.  For more information from the newspaper look here.

Ranked Choice voting works like this. You vote for your top three candidates, or just one, if you wish. Then when no candidate has 50% plus one of the vote, the votes for the least popular candidate are thrown out and the second place candidate is advanced and the total taken again. That means if you vote for Alpha as your first choice, and Alpha is the least vote getter, then your vote for Beta in second place becomes your first choice. This process repeats until there is one candidate with the 50% plus one. This process is all computer generated so we will see who wins.

Remember that this is the state that prides itself on no voter fraud but where in 2008 a candidate’s supporters found 300 ballots in the trunk of a car, and then found a couple hundred in a living room and kept finding lost ballots until their candidate won. No one ever asked, like a judge, just how these ballots got in the car. How wonderful that all of those lost ballots were found so the people who cast those ballots would not be disenfranchished! This is the state where the Secretary of State just put up a web based voter registration system. This is so people in Uzbekistan can register to vote in Minnesota. How terrific! Remember, making a person show indentification before registration or voting is merely an effort to supress the vote!! No doubt, limiting the vote to residents and citizens does supress the vote.