Dakota Beacon

Want to hear about the 2026 and 2028 election fiascos in-the-making? Save this page for reference. Democrat activists advocate for adopting ranked choice voting (RCV) in future Democrat primaries. RCV allows voters to rank all candidates in order of preference with votes reallocated on later tabulations (without voting) until one candidate receives a majority. Working within Democrat Pary primaries provides a springboard to implement RCV nationally.

It works like this. The names of all candidates for a specific office are listed on the ballot. A voter is asked to rank every candidate from first choice to last choice. For example, in a race with five candidates, a voter is asked to rank the candidates from one through five, with the candidate ranked as number one being the voter’s first choice and the candidate ranked as number five being the voter’s last choice.

If no candidate wins a majority (50%) in the tabulation of the ballots, then the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated. Voters who selected the eliminated candidate as their first choice automatically had their votes changed to their second choice, and another round of vote tabulation -- not voting -- occurs.

If no candidate wins a majority in the second tabulation, the lowest scoring candidate is again eliminated and the voters who selected that candidate as their top choice (or as their second choice if that voter’s top choice was eliminated after the first round) have their ballots redistributed to their next choice, and a third round of vote tabulation occurs. During each successive tabulation, votes cast by any voter are shifted around without the consent of the voter.

Such candidate elimination, re-tabulation, and redistribution of votes continue until one of the remaining candidates achieves a majority of the votes. Unfortunately, that candidate may ultimately have been the second, third, fourth, or last choice of many voters -- meaning that a candidate could win who was not the first choice of a majority of voters. This, a perversion of one-person-one-vote.

Zohran Mamdani was elected Mayor of New York City in 2025 using RCV. In the Democratic primary, Mamdani faced a crowded field including Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa. When the RCV re-tabulations were completed, Mamdani secured 50.4% of the vote, defeating Cuomo (41.6%) and Sliwa (7.1%). RCV gave Mamdani a path to victory despite initially polling at just 1%. His win is an example of how RCV can elevate grassroots candidates nationally and reshape political dynamics.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) made it very clear. They plan a socialist takeover of American cities using the Democratic Party as their springboard and RCV as the medium. Mamdani is just the beginning. The DSA tried to elect Somali Muslim socialist Omar Fateh as mayor of Minneapolis. That measure failed. However, it was not a total loss for the DSA because they placed four socialists onto the city council and now hold the majority.

For perspective, note the lack of efficiency and safety in Minneapolis similar to New York. U.S. News and World Report ranked Minneapolis among the nation's 25 most dangerous places to live, with a violent crime rate of 1,164 per 100,000 (93 percent above the national average) and a property crime rate of 4,558 per 100,000 (113 percent above the national average).

RCV did not start as a grassroots effort. Tad Milbourn, a former Intuit project manager and Green Bay native, left Silicon Valley in 2018 for his home state of Wisconsin. He set a goal of starting a tech company that would quietly “lay the groundwork for a ‘better democracy’” In August 2020, he began working full time on RankedVote, a one-man company that hosts online polls and elections. (See https://www.rankedvote.co and note the correct spelling of the domain name as “co”.) (See also https://fairvote.org/.) With all the idealism of potheads, his backers and proponents promised to reduce polarization along with negative campaigns, i.e., dysfunctional democracy. Even voting for third party candidates Milbourn thought seemed futile. “You need to change the system if you’re going to expect a different result.” That should be a HUGH clue as to what the DSA are all about.

Milbourn understood that each voter should have only one vote. But by ranking each candidate, they would provide the information needed for “election administrators” to essentially “simulate a series of instant runoffs.”

In 2016 only 8 cities used RCV. By 2025, 52 municipalities and 18 cities used RCV across several states (CO, DE, MA, ME, MN, NM, NY, and UT) and is spreading. Alternatively, 13 state legislatures have banned RCV.

Because RCV makes the voting process more complicated, voters inevitably make mistakes resulting in spoiled ballots being rejected. States, cities, and municipalities employing RCV exhibit a record of confusion resulting in spoiled ballots. Typically, a third of voters do not rank multiple candidates in RCV elections resulting in voters’ ballots being thrown out. For example, in the 2021 New York mayor’s race, it took eight rounds of vote counting of the 10 candidates during two weeks before a final winner was announced. By the eighth round, the ballots of more than 140,000 voters had been thrown out -- effectively disenfranchising those voters.

Beware of the 2026 and 2028 elections! Most voters are unaware of the implications that ranked choice voting poses. These voters are about to be blindsided by the Progressive left.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).