Election Day: Minneapolis voters try new voting system
November 03, 2009 21:05 PM
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- After months of training, anticipation, and some uncertainty, Minneapolis has arrived at Election Day 2009 -- the first time the city's voters will cast ballots using a method called Ranked Choice Voting.
When voters get their ballots Tuesday, they won't just choose one candidate for elected offices, unless they want to. Instead, they'll have the opportunity to rank their first, second and third choices.
Seven other American cities use the same method of voting in municipal elections, and generally speaking, voters seem get the hang of ranked-choice ballots fairly quickly.
The issue comes when the ballots are counted. If no candidate receives the minimum number of first-choice choice votes needed to win the election, those second- and third-choice votes are counted by hand.
That can take time. Maybe weeks.
At a workshop for reporters last month, the city's election department said winners won't likely be known on Election Night.
"If you see that a particular candidate has a profound majority, that's a pretty good indication that, likely, after the hand count, they'll go on to be a successful candidate" said Pat O'Connor, the city's interim elections director. "We're not going to say it, though."
The city's ballot machines only count one column of votes and can't factor in the second and third choice votes.
John Arntz, the elections director in San Francisco, said he thinks the Minneapolis method of sorting through ranked-choice ballots by hand will be challenging.
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