I am going to attempt to explain a rather unique concept that could ultimately change voting patterns here in the great state of Minnesota -- an idea that has a good chance of abolishing most of the foolishness surrounding partisan politics.
Nov. 2 is decision day for national and Minnesota voters, a time to vote for a third of the U.S. Senate contests, all 435 U.S. House of Representative seats, a Minnesota governor, all state House of Representative and Senate seats, a host of judgeships, county offices and other issues, all in one fell swoop.
Interested? Too many people aren't, and this is a very serious election -- as all elections are. Many folks continue to think, What's the use? Too many candidates ending up on the ballot are selected by special interests with plenty of money to handle campaign strategies.
It certainly can be frustrating, but there is a concept afloat now called ranked-choice voting (RCV). This plan, advocated by an energetic new organization called FairVote Minnesota, could revolutionize voting patterns in this area.
More importantly, it could give voters a real voice in the election process.
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In an attempt to simplify this, consider the following: Currently, major political parties dominate the campaign process.
The candidates are selected by party influence and you and I, the voters, are really taken out of the process.
Party bosses choose the candidates, finance them and depend on common ordinary folks to go to the polls and vote on political principals, not individual candidate qualifications.
The major campaign strategies suggest negative campaigning is the best way to fight an opponent.
I saw plenty of that when I successfully campaigned and was elected to the Minnesota Senate in the early 1970s. In that case, there were only two candidates involved, but, if there were three or more, the results could have been different, and the winner could have been elected with less than the majority of votes cast.
In 1994, Arne Carlson won the governorship with more than 50 percent of the total vote. In 1998, Jesse Ventura was elected governor with only 37 percent of the total vote cast.
That wouldn't happen with RCV, because each voter would mark his or her first, second and third choices; if no candidate received a majority, the votes given to the third candidate would be allotted to the two remaining candidates.
A candidate must receive the majority to get elected.
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In state races, we haven't had a majority vote for governor since Carlson's aforementioned victory.
So, looking at the Nov. 2 election, here is a hypothetical case reported by Wy Spano of MinnPost about how RCV would select a winner if no candidate had the majority vote exceeding 50 percent: "... You gave your first choice in the November election to [Independence Party] candidate Tom Horner and your second choice to [Republican] Tom Emmer. All the first-place votes get counted and it turns out that Democrat Mark Dayton has 36 percent of the first-choice votes, Emmer has 34 percent and Horner 30 percent. Since no one has the majority, the person with the lowest count (Horner) gets dropped out and his second-choice votes are redistributed between Dayton and Emmer. Let's say many people who made Horner their first choice are like you: They said that if Horner wasn't going to win, they wanted Emmer to win. Emmer gets considerably more of Horner's second-choice votes than Dayton does. Emmer wins the election even though Dayton was ahead after the opening round of counting was completed."
There is more to this that will be discussed, debated and dissected in the months ahead. It is quite certain we will all be hearing more about RCV.
FairVote has a Duluth committee that seeks to have an RCV charter amendment eventually placed on a referendum ballot.
Dick Palmer is a former editor and publisher of the Budgeteer. E-mail him at rpalmer341@aol.com .
