(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



North Dakota Outlaws Ranked-Choice and Approval Voting [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-05-16

About a month ago, North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong signed a bill that outlawed both ranked-choice voting and approval voting in local elections. Two years ago, Gov. Doug Burgum vetoed a similar bill because he believed towns, cities, and counties should have the freedom to make their own election rules. Burgum has moved on. He ran for President and dropped out. He is now Trump’s Secretary of the Interior.

Nowhere in ND do they use ranked-choice voting. And the only place with approval voting is Fargo, ND, which happens to be the largest city in the state (population about 140,000 inside the city limits and about 240,000 in the metro area). I happen to live in Moorhead, MN, just across the river from Fargo. This bill was aimed directly at Fargo.

Here are links to two AP articles, if you want to read more:

North Dakota governor signs bill doing away with Fargo’s unusual voting system

Fargo has an election method that helps mainstream candidates. North Dakota lawmakers may ban it

Fargo voters voted for the approval system in 2018 and it was used in city elections in 2020, 2022, and 2024. The Fargo city council has four members plus a mayor. City council members are elected at large to four-year terms, with two elected every two years. Every two years, two city council members are elected.

Here’s how approval voting works: In 2024, seven candidates ran for two seats on the city council. Each Fargo voter could vote for as many candidates as they wanted to, from one to seven. Basically anyone they approved of. The two people with the most votes won. The winners got 46% and 44.5% of the votes. By comparison, in 2018, before approval voting, there were nine candidates for city council and the two winners got 18% and 16.5% of the vote.

North Dakota is a very red state. Fargo is slightly more liberal and slightly more Democratic. There’s a big university and the city has more diversity than many of the rural areas of the state. The Republicans in the legislature outlawed approval voting because they thought it favored more boring, middle of the road, candidates. MAGA extremists might lose. Like that’s a bad thing.

I don’t want this diary to be about the evil Republicans in ND or in Fargo. I really like ranked-choice voting. I think approval voting has some positives, too. For one thing, I think it encourages candidates to do less negative campaigning. “Vote for me!” Not “Vote against him/her!”

Does anybody else have an opinion about approval voting?

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/16/2322631/-North-Dakota-Outlaws-Ranked-Choice-and-Approval-Voting?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.