Ranked Choice Voting for Longmont at the Top of the List
Aiming To Incorporate RCV on the Mayoral Ballot by 2027
Ranked choice voting (RCV) allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, rather than choosing just one, and a group called RCV for Longmont is organizing a movement to bring ranked choice voting to Longmont.
John Lembke and Dillon Rankin are the co-founders of RCV for Longmont. Their goal: to incorporate RCV on the mayoral election ballot by 2027 in Longmont.
RCV for Longmont believes RCV leads to more representative outcomes, discourages negative campaigning, and ensures that winners have broader support.
Lembke initially highlighted the broader implications of adopting RCV, particularly in addressing problems with the current primary system.
“One of the problems that we have is in the primary system, the most extreme voters pick the candidates,” Lembke explained. “What ends up happening is an elected official will vote for something that’s great for their constituents, but there’s a particular small group with axes to grind that primary them out. Ranked choice voting helps to reduce the threat of people getting primaried.”
Lembke went on to explain how RCV could also lessen the influence of money in elections.
“In other cities that implement it—Denver is a great example—the people who win the mayoral election are the people who raise the most money,” Lembke said. “But with RCV, you see the winning percentage go from 80 percent to 50 percent, which means having the most money is no longer as decisive. It’s great because it means an everyday person can actually run.”
Lembke pointed to other examples where RCV could have prevented contentious outcomes.
“In Erie, they had a four-way split where the person that won had a winning percentage of only 28 percent or 20 percent,” Lembke said. “Now that person represents the city. A similar thing happened in Aurora, where two liberal candidates split the vote, allowing a single conservative, Mike Coffman, to win with just 38 percent of the vote. Ranked choice voting prevents that from happening because whoever had the lowest percentage gets knocked out, and their second-choice votes are redistributed.”
Another benefit, Lembke emphasized, is cost savings.
“Denver could save a million dollars by adopting RCV because they wouldn’t need to hold a runoff election,” Lembke said. “RCV, also called instant runoff voting, eliminates the need for a separate runoff, saving taxpayers money.”
Critics argue that RCV is too complex, but Lembke dismissed these concerns.
“We’ve had the ability to scan sheets of paper since the 1970s,” Lembke said. “This is not particularly difficult compared to what we do now. We can send rockets into space and land them vertically by the ocean. We can count rankings on paper.”
Partnering with Lembke is Dillon Rankin, an 18-year-old freshman and political science major at the University of Colorado Boulder, who also serves as an organizer for the campus’s RCV chapter. Rankin’s curiosity about politics began earlier than most.
“I think my eyes opened to the fact that politics existed back in middle school when Trump got elected the first time,” Rankin said. “I started watching C-SPAN a lot for some reason. I thought, ‘This is awesome!’ I’ve been into it ever since, and that’s kind of why I’m doing what I’m doing now.”
It wasn’t long before Rankin’s interest turned into action. Inspired by videos from YouTuber CGP Grey, who creates short, animated explainers on a variety of topics, Rankin delved into the benefits of RCV.
“When I was in high school at Silver Creek, I was involved in student government for my junior and senior years,” Rankin said. “We got the Student Senate to pass an amendment to our governing document to elect our student body president using ranked choice voting.”
Rankin’s high school experience reinforced his belief in the system.
“Ranked choice voting is only useful if there’s more than two candidates running,” Rankin explained. “With three or more candidates, it’s meant to get the winner over 50 percent of the vote. In our student election, one office had four people running. Even though the results wouldn’t have been different under plurality voting because one candidate was far and away the favorite, it was still great to see how the system worked.”
Rankin outlined several advantages of RCV, including its ability to eliminate the “spoiler effect,” where similar candidates split votes, leading to the election of a less popular option.
“In a plurality election, you’ve got two relatively equally popular candidates standing for the same things running against one guy who’s less popular but is a united front,” Rankin explained. “Ranked choice voting allows people to cast their vote confidently, knowing that if their first choice gets eliminated, their vote gets transferred to their second choice. It gives voters more peace of mind.”
RCV also encourages more candidates to run, Rankin argued.
“Voters are always complaining, ‘Why do our elections come down to one of two people?’ Ranked choice voting negates the ‘lesser of two evils’ mindset,” Rankin said. “It can encourage more people to run, knowing they’re not going to draw away support from someone else.”
Rankin pointed out that in Pierce County, Washington, researchers studied elections before and after the switch to RCV. Under plurality voting, the richest candidate won five out of every six elections. After the switch to RCV, this number dropped to three out of six. RCV also promotes coalition-building and reduces partisan politics. Candidates benefit from being someone’s second choice, which discourages demonizing opponents as a winning strategy.
For Rankin, the mission is clear.
“Ranked choice voting makes elections fairer, reduces the role of money, and encourages candidates to focus on broader appeal rather than divisive tactics,” Rankin said. “I think a lot of people, once they understand it, will see why it’s such a good idea.”
The main challenge, according to Rankin, is not opposition but rather a lack of awareness. The initial focus of RCV for Longmont is on education.
“I would say the biggest obstacle is not that there’s a big population of anti-ranked choice people out there. It’s that no one knows what ranked choice voting is,” Rankin said. “A big part of what we want to do first is tell people why ranked choice voting is good, but first, tell people what ranked choice voting is.”
Rankin and his team are pursuing a two-pronged approach to get RCV on the ballot.
“Ranked choice voting has to be adopted by amending the city’s charter, which is like the Constitution for the city,” Rankin explained. “To get an amendment on the ballot, you can either go around and collect signatures, or you can get City Council to refer it to the ballot. Ultimately, we would prefer to work with City Council because there’s a lot of nitty-gritty logistical issues that have to be worked out in order to make it happen.”
Rankin acknowledged that this process will take time, with a goal of implementing RCV by the November 2027 municipal elections.
“We believe that it’s too tight of a turnaround to try to get Longmont to do ranked choice voting in November of 2025. That would be too fast,” Rankin said. “Our goal really is to have Longmont begin doing this in November of 2027.”
Rankin noted that RCV amendments at the municipal level have seen significant success.
“Proposition 131 [from the November Colorado ballot], a lot of people are looking at that and saying it means that ranked choice voting is unpopular,” Rankin said. “I don’t think that’s why it failed. Nationwide, a ranked choice voting municipal charter amendment is now on a 35-win streak. Across the country, ranked choice voting at the city level has won 35 elections in a row. It’s really popular at the local level, but bringing it up to the state or above is a different story.”
Rankin believes that as more people experience RCV in smaller contests, they’ll begin to embrace it on a larger scale.
“The more people get to do it in small contests and see how great it is, the more they’ll be like, ‘Why aren’t we doing this in other places?’” Rankin said.
Witnessing the experience of Boulder adopting RCV for its mayoral election further solidified Rankin’s advocacy.
“Boulder adopted ranked choice voting in 2020 and ran their first election with it in 2023,” Rankin said. “That election allowed the second choices of less popular candidates to influence who ended up winning. It’s a fantastic example of why ranked choice voting is beneficial.”
RCV has gained traction in Colorado’s Front Range, with cities like Boulder, Fort Collins, and Broomfield recently adopting it.
“Ranked choice voting is kind of having a moment in the Front Range,” Rankin said. “Boulder adopted it real recently. Fort Collins adopted it very recently. Broomfield adopted it very recently. And when you look at the polling, the Boulder County clerk did a phenomenal job running the election. Everyone understood their ballot, everyone liked that it was ranked choice voting.”
One of RCV for Longmont’s key supporters is Linda Templin, executive director of RCV for Colorado, who has been instrumental in similar campaigns in other cities.
“She’s done exactly what we’re trying to do in Broomfield,” Rankin said. “She introduced John and me, gave us materials for our council meeting, and has been an invaluable resource.”
Rankin and his team have started laying the groundwork in Longmont. Recently, they presented their case to the city council.
“We reached out to Councilman Sean McCoy specifically, and he said, ‘Look, I understand ranked choice voting. I understand the benefits of ranked choice voting. I’m interested in what you guys are doing, but I need to see more community support before I throw my weight behind it,’” Rankin said.
While some worry that too many candidates could complicate RCV elections, Rankin doesn’t see this as an issue at the city level.
“In Longmont, getting on the ballot is really easy,” Rankin noted. “You only need 50 signatures for mayor or 25 for a ward seat. Despite that, very few people run. If overcrowding ever became an issue, we could adjust the signature requirements.”
Still, challenges remain—not least among them, educating the public about how RCV works and why it matters.
“At this point, it’s about putting it on the ballot and having voters approve it,” Lembke said. “That’s the next big hurdle.”
Lembke and Rankin are optimistic about the future of RCV in Longmont. They hope to host more public events, such as Q&A sessions, and increase their visibility in the community.
“The more people sit with the idea, the more it makes sense,” Rankin said. “It’s such an easy way to improve the quality of elections and, hopefully, people’s relationship with government in general.”
Rankin added, “I definitely see there being hesitancy, and there has been hesitancy, but once people start realizing that, oh, there are several reasons why I don’t like politics and ranked choice voting can help prevent those things, I think more and more people will come to see it as a good thing.”
RCV for Longmont is in the process of assembling an Executive Board and actively seeking potential members to join. Rankin encouraged anyone interested in contributing to reach out via email at rcv4longmont@gmail.com.