Question 1

There are a lot of tax increases on the ballot this November. Will 3C or 3D raise my taxes?

Accepted Answer

Nope! The costs of implementing RCV are negligible, and if Longmont votes to adopt RCV, they will implement it without raising anyone’s taxes!

Question 2

Does RCV mean I have to vote more than once?

Accepted Answer

Nope! In an RCV election, ballots are counted in multiple rounds, but voters only have to cast a single ballot.

Question 3

Does RCV mean I have to rank every candidate on my ballot?

Accepted Answer

Nope! Voters can rank as many candidates as they’d like. For example, if there are five candidates on the but you only like two of them, you can rank one first and the other second, and leave your third, fourth, and fifth choices blank!

Question 4

Does ranking more than one candidate weaken my first choice?

Accepted Answer

No. Ranking additional candidates as your second, third, fourth, or later choices will not affect your first choice. Your vote always starts out counting for your first choice, and your later choices only come into play if your first choice ends up with the fewest votes. You can think of second, third etc. rankings as backup choices expressing who you’d like your vote to count for if your first choice can’t win.

Question 5

Is RCV constitutional?

Accepted Answer

Yep! RCV has been held to be constitutional by every single court that has ever ruled on the issue!

Question 6

Didn’t Colorado voters just reject RCV for state and federal elections?

Accepted Answer

Sort of—Proposition 131 was rejected by Colorado voters in 2024 by a 56%-44% margin. Proposition 131 combined two separate issues—the use of RCV in general elections and the elimination of partisan primaries. Instead of there being separate Democratic and Republican primaries, all candidates for a given office would appear on the same primary ballot. The primaries would have been held under plurality voting, and the top-four vote-getters would have advanced to an RCV general election. Because it would have prevented Colorado’s political parties from choosing who would represent them in the general election, both the Colorado Democratic Party and the Colorado Republican Party, as well as many minor parties and other elected officials, opposed the effort. Despite this widespread opposition, including from both major political parties, the measure barely failed—and the margin was even closer in Longmont—48%-52%. The fact that the measure barely failed, in spite of all of this opposition resulting from the unrelated issue of nonpartisan primaries (which is not relevant to Longmont elections, because we do not hold primaries), speaks to the strength, and not to the weakness, of RCV!

Frequently Asked Questions