FairVote MN contracted St. Cloud State University to conduct a poll about how Minneapolis residents liked Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). As you all probably recall, Minneapolis used RCV for the first time in the 2009 election. The results are good (and you can see them for yourselves here). Voters understood it, liked it and there weren’t any problems.
“The findings of the impartial survey show what FairVote Minnesota has seen in other cities that have successfully made a switch to Ranked Choice Voting — with good voter education, a well-designed ballot and well-trained election judges, voters of all ages and income and ethnic groups understand the system and want to continue to use it,” stated Massey pointing out the following facts from the survey:
• 95 percent of voters polled in Minneapolis said RCV was easy to use, and 90 percent said that they understand RCV perfectly or fairly well
• 65 percent said they believe RCV should be used in the future
• Only 3 percent of the people voting said they didn’t understand RCV
(FairVoteMN email press release)
An even better finding is that opponents of RCV can no longer claim that people won’t understand it … cuz let’s face it, only one ballot filled out incorrectly in an election is really rare.
There was only one defective ballot in the whole Minneapolis election.
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