Minnetonka votes to keep ranked-choice voting

Minnetonka voted to keep ranked-choice voting by a wide margin Tuesday.

The Minneapolis suburb first passed ranked-choice voting in a 2020 ballot measure, but a group of residents opposed to the practice petitioned for a ballot question to repeal it. Voters opted to keep ranked-choice voting by an even larger margin this time around.

"I think these results confirm Minnetonka voters like it," said Mary Pat Blake, a Minnetonka resident who co-chaired the campaign to keep ranked-choice voting.

Ellen Cousins, a Minnetonka resident who led the campaign against ranked-choice voting, said she respected the outcome but said it was still decided by a minority of registered voters in Minnetonka. "We believe the vast majority of Minnetonkans do not want or like ranked-choice voting, even though the numbers show differently."

Minnetonka Mayor Brad Wiersum had also opposed ranked-choice voting, but said he now saw the issue as settled.

Though Minnetonka did add staff to deal with ranked-choice voting, he said, the city saved money by not holding a primary election.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Minnetonka was still tabulating results from three City Council races where no candidate won a majority of first-choice votes. The process is time-consuming, Wiersum said, because Minnetonka counts second and third choices by hand.

St. Paul, Minneapolis and Bloomington were also still counting ranked-choice votes in some City Council races Wednesday. Council races in St. Louis Park, which also uses ranked-choice voting, were all decided with first-choice votes.

Though opponents raised concerns about confusion, cost and the time it takes to get results, Jeanne Massey, executive director of FairVote Minnesota, an advocacy group that worked with ranked-choice proponents in Minnetonka, said she thinks the system works for voters.

"Voters were saying, 'We like this, we're smart people,'" Massey said.

Massey said FairVote Minnesota plans to advocate in the next legislative session on a "local option measure" to allow more jurisdictions to enact ranked-choice voting, including counties, school districts and cities that don't have a city charter form of government.

She said the Secretary of State's Office is studying what it would take to bring ranked-choice voting to statewide elections. That issue could be taken up in the Legislature in 2025.