LISA NELSON

HANCOCK — The League of Women Voters of Copper Country will hold its annual meeting beginning at 11:15 a.m. Saturday at the Griffin Cafe in the Skyline Commons in Hancock. The meeting includes a presentation on ranked choice voting. The presentation and meeting are open to the public and include a buffet lunch.

Guest speaker and League member Lisa Nelson will present “What is Ranked Choice Voting and the Michigan Rank MI Vote Ballot Proposal” Nelson is a member of the UP Rank MI Vote team and will explain what the system entails and the proposed statewide ballot to adopt the system for state and federal elections.

Ranked choice voting was a topic that drew interest from LWVCC members and in January its board determined it was discussed enough to warrant its own focused presentation. The system of voting is most prevalent in Alaska and Maine, though is also present in specific forms in locations like Hawaii for its special congressional elections.

LWVCC Co-president Faith Morrison said ranked choice voting is an alternative to the “first past the post” system most Americans are familiar with, and the presentation can serve as a way to educate Copper Country residents of how it works. She said the system Michigan and most of the country operates under allows victors who take the most votes, even if it is less than half of the votes tallied.

“Ranked choice voting is the idea when you go to the election, if there’s more than two candidates, you would list your first choice and your second choice,” Morrison said. “And automatically if one of the one, two, three or four candidates gets 50 percent of the votes the election is over. If nobody gets over 50 percent the person who was in last place in that round gets eliminated from consideration, and the second place votes of everybody whose vote wasn’t counted, they get redistributed.”

Morrison believes this is an alternative to consider if voters are displeased with the two-party system within America, but more specifically Michigan. She said the current system usually only results in Democrat and Republican victories, but ranked choice voting allows citizens to demonstrate interest in other options.

“That could have an influence even on the majority parties. But right now, they’re (Libertarian and Green Parties) kind of invisible, because the only people who vote for those things are people who are in scare quotes, ‘throwing away their vote’ on a minority candidate.”

Morrison said no system is perfect, which is why it warrants discussion at the event. After the presentation attendees are free to ask Nelson questions about ranked choice voting.