My 7 or 9 longtime readers will know I am generally interested in elections and voting rights. I especially like the use of ranked choice voting (explained here with both extant animals and, also, dinosaurs) as well as other voting systems which might engage the electorate and lead to good representation of constituent needs.
But Ranked Choice Voting continues to pop up in various places around the United States. As of this post, it’s only used in a couple places for Federal elections and primaries, but it appears in 14 states for at least certain localities, like cities. Washington, DC is the latest city I’ve heard of that’s putting the possibility of ranked choice voting to the vote. This particular initiative also has a wrinkle in that it seeks to allow independent voters the ability to vote in primary elections. According to the article, there may be as many as 70,000 voters in DC that are independents, which at around 10% of the population (and therefore a greater percentage of the electorate) means they are a non-trivial group of voters. But the city is also consistently dominated by the Democratic Party, whose local leaders, per the article, are not in favor of the proposition. More news to come… but in the meantime, don’t forget to make sure you’re registered to vote for the general election this November!