Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is the new voting system being implemented this year by the City of Minneapolis. There will be no Primary election in September, which most voters typically skip anyway. All candidates who filed candidacies at the Minneapolis Election Office will appear on the ballot on General Election Day, November 3rd, 2009. Voters will rank candidates in order of their preference for up to 3 candidates – 1st ranked choice, 2nd ranked choice and 3rd ranked choice. In order to get elected one of the candidates must get 50% of the votes +1 (a true majority).
There are 4 candidates running in the 4th Ward City Council race this year. If none of us reaches this 50% +1 majority threshold on the first vote count then the candidate with the least votes gets eliminated from the ballot and all of the voters’ 2nd ranked votes get transferred to the remaining 3 candidates. If none of the remaining 3 candidates reaches that 50% + 1 threshold then again the candidate with the least votes gets dropped from the ballot and the voters’ 3rd ranked votes transfer to the 2 remaining candidates. There must be a winner at this point. I’ll explain this better in the near future with visual images once I gain clarification and figure out how to articulate the process better (best).
I launched my campaign on January 31st of this year, 2009. While I initially wasn’t expecting another challenger to the incumbent’s 3rd re-election bid – she ran uncontested in 2005 - I was not surprised nor disappointed when TP announced a month or two later. Understanding the advantages of having three or more opponents in an RCV election means that TP’s candidacy increases my odds of winning.
The candidate filing period for Minneapolis elections this year began July 7th, 2009 and ended July 21st, 2009. On the final filing day Grant Cermak (GC), a self-described “Ron Paul Republican” filed as an Independent candidate seeking the 4th Ward City Council office. GC ran as a Republican against the incumbent State Representative Joe Mullery during the last 58A election. GC seems to understand RCV because he called me the day after candidate filings were closed and we met the following morning. He proposed that we collaborate by encouraging our supporters to rank each of us as their 2nd ranked choices on the ballot, in order to unseat BJ. Republican is a bad word for many people in Minneapolis, especially over North, but there are some here. (Some have indicated that I may get their votes) Although I vote Democrat most of the time and have never voted Republican, I’m essentially non-partisan – really independent – so I don’t obsess over political party affiliation. I’m not any party’s ‘ride or die’ member. I appreciate GC’s independent leanings and I didn’t disagree with the few issue positions that he shared with me, but I didn’t commit to the proposal because he said he wasn’t going to be actively campaigning and I need to know more about his politics. He’s depending on support from some of the 3,000 votes he told me he got during his State Representative campaign. When I asked GC if he was going to reach out to TP he wasn’t clear, but it seemed possible. We’ll see. I’ll be glad to have an additional voice in the candidate debates. This is all so very interesting…
OK, I’m finally getting to the point of this post: TP doesn’t seem to get RCV. I parked behind him when I arrived at the Lind-Bohanon National Night Out event with my daughter. I greeted him and his family and suggested to him (even after a few previous incidents with non-responses) that we collaborate by encouraging each others’ voters to rank each of us as their 2nd choice. BJ is deeply entrenched and has a reliable base of 2,000 – 3,000 voters, but both TP and I are reaching out to many people who usually don’t vote in City level elections, and to the many consistent voters who are discontent (to put it mildly) with the incumbent.
(One man said to me, “If so many people don’t like BJ then how does she keep getting re-elected?” It’s because most of the Ward typically tunes out of local politics - although many of us stay tuned to the national news - resulting in low voter turn-out. This year BJ has an opponent in me who is going door to door, and God willing, I’ll make it to nearly every door. Once the residents who care about the community but are disconnected from their City Council / City politics get connected with candidates that they can believe in then entrenched incumbents can be removed from office by the majority, the disaffected people.)
In response to my proposition, Troy mumbled unconvincingly under his breath that “we might sit down one day.” If he can’t think on his feet and make a simple decision about an arrangement that works in his favor and in the best interest of our community than it’s hard for me to be confident that he’ll make more critical decisions on behalf of the community – decisions that will often require discernment under pressure and decision making within a short time frame. Frankly, I’m disappointed in TP and will not directly encourage my voters to rank him as their second choice. BJ will be glad about this. I’ll be doing my best to educate the community about how RCV works, but my supporters’ 2nd and 3rd choices are up to them. For the many Northsiders who don’t want a 4th term of the incumbent, they’ll know who to not rank. She’s a nice lady, but I’m not feeling her politics and that’s why it makes since for the challengers to collaborate with RCV. I’m still asking for the 2nd or 3rd ranked choices of all the candidates’ supporters, including everyone whose 1st ranked choice vote isn’t Marcus Harcus.
I don’t think any of the 3 challengers will be openly collaborating with the incumbent. I’m sure she realizes this. A couple of months ago the City Council voted whether or not to move forward with the implementation of RCV this fall, because they had the option of deciding that the city wasn’t ready to implement the new voting system. 5th Ward Council Member Don Samuels was absent from that vote and BJ was one of 2 Council Members who voted against the will of the people again: → In a 2005 City referendum (a public decision to be made by the voters on their election ballots) 2/3rds of the Minneapolis voters voted in favor of RCV and that’s why it’s going down this year Minneapolitans. I’m worried about the potentially high level of confusion at the polls, because most of the people I speak to about RCV don’t know about it or don’t yet understand how it works. I’ve knocked on the doors of many election judges who are nervous about it too.
It should be made clear to all candidates and voters that ranking only 1 candidate poses the risk to a voter of not having their vote count in the event that their 1st ranked choice candidate is dropped from the ballot before a winner is decided. Hypothetically speaking, if either TP’s supporters only ranked him as their 1st ranked choice but didn’t rank another candidate, like me, as their 2nd or 3rd ranked choices then their vote would not count in subsequent rounds if and when none of the candidates reached the 50% + 1 majority of votes in the first or second or third round(s). Voters should also know that they cannot rank 1 candidate more than once, meaning my supporters cannot rank me as their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice. We’ve got to play by these new rules people otherwise we’ll get played!
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Splitting the Race-based, Age-based, Partisan-based voting
Many people have suggested that because both TP and I are Black that we will split the Black vote. I admit that I’ve worried about it too, more than once. This is quite possible, but it seems inevitable that many, if not most of TP’s African American voters and most of mine will more than likely rank each of us as their 2nd choice anyway. It should be noted that most Black people do enjoy supporting Black candidates, but most of us don’t blindly cast our ballot for candidates simply because they are Black. That would be ridiculous. If U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas moved over North and ran for City Council he’d struggle to get 100 Black votes. African Americans are far from monolithic, just like any other ‘census tracked group.’
I don’t like analyzing potential voter segments along the lines of so-called “race,” because it seems polarizing to me, but it is the way our “race obsessed” society operates, in perpetuity. For me, there is only one race, the human race, but I recognize that there are idiosyncratic cultural differences between groups that must be acknowledged and accommodated. The diversity of physical appearances, historical experiences, continents and countries of origin, traditional customs, religious views and practices, and varying social norms are valuable. However, regardless where we or our ancestors migrated from, we all share a human experience, meaning we all do the same basic things to survive. An older Hmong man said it would be great if we could all get to know each other better so that we can understand each other and get along better. All of this diversity exists in our neighborhoods and it is beautiful on a physical level, but I believe that the more we can focus on our communalities the greater sense of community we can build. Many people have lamented about the lack of cross-cultural interactions in our very diverse neighborhoods.
There are about as many European Americans as there are African Americans and the Asian American population is sizable here too. I’ve met many Native Americans. I’ve met many Latinos, multi-generational Americans and new immigrants, as well as immigrants from Africa, the Middle Eastern and Western Asia who have lived here for years. The electorate is diverse and therefore no one “racial group” will decide the outcome of the Ward 4 race. Moreover, any elected officials who represent North Minneapolis must be culturally competent in communicating with and representing the interests of a very diverse community and I believe I’m most qualified because I’ve grown up during the past few decades during the local explosion in “racial” diversification. I’ve gone to school, worked with and befriended a wide cultural diversity of humans and I have a knack for getting people from all walks of life OPEN and comfortable communicating and working with me. I speak with and mostly listen to people even if they lack the right to vote (too young, not citizens, or disenfranchised by probation / parole, prohibited by religious doctrines, etc.) because regardless who votes for me, I will represent and serve all 4th Ward residents.
I hope people are not voting for candidates simply because they perceive one supposedly “looks like me,” is older, a member of a particular political party (“you’re in a gang”) or the candidate with the most yard sign, because that is superficial, out-dated and foolish thinking. I know “sense is not common,” but come on Northsiders - choose the best political representation for our community! Get OPEN, listen to the candidates… see through the empty rhetoric, political posturing and pandering and make your ranked choices based on the one(s) whose platform resonates most with your values, with your heart and mind. Vote for the candidate who is most capable of representing and serving our community with equitable, engaging and effective public leadership. The status quo is unacceptable, as is ambitious political career opportunism dominated by self-interest. You’ve got a nurse, a pipefitter and an intellectual community organizer to choose from.
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