Does every vote count? If you ever find yourself voting in an election with multiple candidates for multiple open seats, such as the election of the Greenbelt City Council, you may observe that over time the incumbent candidates have a very high probability of being reelected to office. Of course, incumbents have the well earned advantage of having experience and of being more well known than any given challenger. However it may often be the case that a challenger has greater average support than the last place incumbent who wins reelection. The reason a strong challenger is at a great disadvantage at the ballot box is because voters have no mechanism to rank the candidates. While a challenger might be your first or second choice among the field, they get no benefit over your seventh choice. In such a situation you might in fact be better served by limiting your votes to two candidates. Join this nonpartisan discussion, Monday 7-8pm, to explore the issues and a possible solution, ranked choice voting, as implemented in other election districts.
