To the Editor:
If you’re like me, one of the most difficult parts of elections are the attack ads which seem to be everywhere. You can’t watch TV or listen to the radio without being bombarded by negative political ads. All the attacks of one candidate on another seem to drown out the actual issues. Why does this happen? Because it works, and our current election process makes it possible. But there’s another election system which is proven to diminish these attacks: ranked-choice voting.
Under ranked-choice voting, candidates need a majority of support to win, and this means they can’t simply ignore the supporters of other candidates. They need to find common ground on issues with their opponents and appeal to their opponents’ supporters, asking them to be ranked second or third on their ballots. But if they “go negative,” voters will not rank the candidate highly, since most voters really don’t like it.
This is part of the reason that political leaders who have reputations for civility and compromise support ranked choice voting, including Gov. Tim Walz, Congressman Dean Phillips, former U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger and former Gov. Arne Carlson.
While we don’t yet have an atmosphere of negativity in Minnetonka City Council elections, it can happen, and has happened in other similar cities. Safeguarding our elections against negativity and doing whatever we can to ensure civility seems to be a worthy goal. Nobody gets into a car expecting to be in a car accident, but we buckle our seat belts anyway – it’s common sense to take preventive measures. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Jeanne Lutgen
Minnetonka