We need some more education on RCV

I enjoyed the article on the mayor’s race and Ranked Choice Voting (“Is there such a thing as being too nice?,” Jan. 26). Playing nice is good.

You had a sentence in it, however, that touches on what I think is a confusing way that people have been asked to react to Ranked Choice Voting. You said “Voters are asked to rank candidates in order of preference.” Indeed, they have been asked to do that, particularly in the city educational effort. But that approach leads to a misunderstanding of how ranked choice voting/instant runoff works. It leads voters to rank all the candidates for mayor one through five.

But voters are not listing their preferences from beautiful to ugly, as in a beautiful contest. What they are really doing is casting a vote in the instant runoff should their candidate, their first ranked choice, the one they think most beautiful, doesn’t make it. Perhaps they are casting votes in two rounds of the instant runoff, with a third ranking if their first two ranked choices are eliminated.

Having voters think of ranked choice voting as a listing of preferences can lead to errors. Imagine, for instance, someone who really wants only one candidate, the beautiful, and really does not want another candidate, the ugly. That voter might be tempted to rank the beautiful as number one and the ugly at the bottom as number five. The problem with that is that the voting machine will skip over the unranked positions and read the ballot as first choice, beautiful, second choice, ugly; not what was intended.

Voters should rank only those candidates that they want to vote for, not a listing in order of preference.

FRANK KATZ

Former city attorney Santa Fe