Ranked-choice voting hurts Minneapolis minorities

Steve Brandt’s Feb. 28 article (“Funds for election come up short”) addressed only one of the serious shortcomings of Minneapolis’ ranked-choice voting system (RCV). Brandt pointed out that Minneapolis will need $1.7 million to “properly run” the system, which costs five times more per vote than traditional voting, according to the article.

What is more important is the potential disenfranchisement the RCV system inflicts on minority and less-affluent voters. According to official Minneapolis election reports from its first RCV election in 2009, 6.4 percent of all ballots cast contained an error. Even more alarming, 27 percent of the ballots cast in the predominantly East African/Somali precinct in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood contained ballot errors.