Sioux Falls voters went to the polls on June 2 to elect a new mayor and fill four city council seats. Yet only one of those five races was actually decided that day. The other four required runoff elections three weeks later. And in the runoff, the mayor’s race is still too close to call. That should lead us to ask a simple question: Is there a better way? There is.
It is called ranked choice voting, sometimes referred to as instant runoff voting. Instead of selecting just one candidate, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. They can rank as many, or as few, as they wish. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots are counted for each voter’s next choice. The process continues until one candidate has majority support.
