A measure on the November ballot will allow Broomfield residents to vote on implementing a ranked-choice voting model for the city’s mayor and city council elections beginning in 2023. 

The Broomfield City Council unanimously voted to refer the measure to the ballot Tuesday, RCV for Colorado announced. Currently, Broomfield’s city elections use a plurality voting system, meaning the candidate with the most votes wins, like in U.S. presidential elections.

Under ranked-choice voting, also known as RCV or instant-runoff voting, voters rank candidates by preference. If no candidate gets the majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated and all ballots with that candidate selected first move to their second preference. This is repeated until a candidate has a majority.

“Our current plurality voting method is the worst of all systems because it discourages participation and can result in misrepresentations of the electorate when there are more than two candidates,” said Councilman Deven Shaff. “RCV would provide opportunities for more candidates to freely run for office while encouraging positive yet competitive campaigns.”

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To date, only four Colorado cities have implemented RCV models. Boulder will use RCV in its mayoral election starting in 2023, Telluride and Basalt currently use it in some municipal elections and Carbondale adopted RCV in 2002 but has not yet used it in an election.

In addition, the Denver City Council is expected to consider a proposal to implement RCV for its mayor and city council elections in the coming weeks to address a timeline issue with the city’s current runoff elections.

Supporters of ranked-choice argue it assures winning candidates aren’t opposed by most voters, even if the winner isn’t their first choice, and allows voters to select their true picks instead of feeling limited to choosing between the top two candidates.

“Colorado has over a decade of RCV experience, which has shaped the work at the Secretary of State’s office under both Republican and Democratic administrations,” said Linda Templin with RCV for Colorado. “Tuesday’s unanimous vote by council speaks clearly to their well-founded confidence in Colorado’s gold-standard elections.”

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However, opponents say ranked-choice voting does not guarantee winning candidates have majority support as runoff elections do and it can result in voter disenfranchisement by throwing out ballots that do not rank the most popular candidates.

In 2010, the winning candidate of an RCV election in San Francisco was only listed on 21.1% of ballots cast and, on about half of the ballots, they were listed as the second, third or lower choice. The candidate won after 20 rounds of elimination because 21 candidates were running and most voters did not rank all 21, according to the San Francisco Department of Elections.

Trouble also was reported when New York City held its first ranked-choice election in June, with one mistaken announcement of results. It took more than two weeks to announce all the winners.