City in Colorado Looks to San Leandro for Lessons on RCV

Residents of Ft. Collins, Colorado may have never heard of San Leandro until they decided to take up the idea of adopting ranked-choice voting.

Ft. Collins will vote April 5 on whether to adopt the voting system that put Stephen Cassidy in the mayor's seat last November after six rounds of ballot counting. 

Former Mayor Tony Santos, who was unseated in the election despite holding the highest percentage of votes through the first four rounds of counting, has leant his voice to the anti-ranked-choice voting campaign in Colorado, Hawaii and elsewhere.

In a story posted Sunday on the website of the Coloradoan, Santos called ranked-choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting, "undemocratic and un-American." It's not the first time he's made that characterization.  

Cassidy told the newspaper ranked-choice voting "worked as advertised" and suggested that fewer people would have participated in a runoff election had there been one. 

Supporters of ranked-choice voting for Ft. Collins include the  League of Women Voters, Northern Colorado Central Labor Council, and Colorado Common Cause, an open government group. 

Groups opposed to adopting the new voting method include the local chamber of commerce and the majority of the editorial board of the Coloradoan.