What if Canadians used the Popular Vote system? [OC]

It's tricky to apply citywide politics at a state level and that's a trap that a lot of planners fall into. What works for city politics doesn't always translate statewide. Especially given the rather large urban rural divide in Minnesota. Minnesota is also not really a small state. It's a medium sized state with more consensus-oriented politics and not the kind of place that's necessarily conducive to a small but organized state campaign. I do like Minnesota, and Minneapolis in particular is doing some good stuff on this front, but Minneapolis is not the whole of Minnesota.

It'd take a lot more effort to get from point A to point B on voting reform, and you'd have to overcome a lot of rural Republican objections as well as outright Republican control of the upper chamber. DFL is definitely open-minded enough to consider this, but Minnesota's got a much longer ways to go before they 'get there' on the statewide level or have the impetus to really focus on this. The bigger problem though is that in general, RCV might actually hurt Dems at the statewide level in Minnesota, given how purple it is. Johnson netted 3% of the vote there, and McMullin nearly cleared 2% alone there, which was an anomaly outside the western states where he was stronger.

The Green Party isn't as threatening in Minnesota (outside of Roosevelt County up north, where Dems have a decent case for RCV at the local level), largely due to the open-mindedness and traditions of DFL. This isn't a concern for Minneapolis, but it is a concern when factoring in Minnesota elections as a whole. The biggest problem here is that the state is so consistently close every national election.

The reason I mentioned the states I did was that they have a tradition at the state level of this kind of behavior, and not just at the city level. Plus, there's all in the bottom fifth of states by US population. There's also enough factional/coalitional support within these states to make these kind of reforms plausible. (they're still a big ask. I'm not even remotely saying they'd be easy. In fact, I'd probably bet against them happening even there. Maine's the only one I'd really entertain an actual wager on, and I'd have to be given good odds.)

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