About Ranked Choice Voting: Ranked choice voting is an alternative form of voting for elections with three or more candidates where instead of picking a single candidate, voters can rank candidates in the order of their preference. Once the first-choice votes are counted, candidates with the lowest levels of support are eliminated in successive rounds. Voters who supported those candidates have their votes redistributed to the remaining candidates in accordance with their rankings. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of the vote. This candidate is then declared the winner. Click here for an article with more detailed description of how ranked choice voting works.

Benefits: Ranked choice voting is important because it offers numerous benefits over plurality voting, the system Longmont currently uses to choose its mayor and City Council members. More specifically, ranked choice voting can:

• ensure elected officials are supported by a greater share of their voters
• prevent minor candidates from acting as "spoilers"
• lessen negative campaigning
• encourage more candidates to run & increase ideological diversity in elections

Click here for a YouTube video that explains the benefits of ranked choice voting as compared to the way we vote now, with examples from places in the United States that already use ranked choice.