| Jon King | Michigan Advance |
Starting Sunday, Rank MI Vote will host 40 town halls in 40 days in cities in metro Detroit, as well as Grand Rapids, Flint, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Marquette and Traverse City. Rank MI Vote is a nonprofit modeled after Voters Not Politician, the group that successfully led statewide ballot initiatives introducing Michigan’s independent redistricting commission in 2018 and backed expanded voting rights in 2022.
Reduce the extremity in our politics
“One thing ranked choice does is help reduce the extremity in our politics,” said Ron Zimmerman, executive director of Rank MI Vote. “Because it requires a 50% winner, every candidate that runs in a ranked choice election has to appeal to a much broader swath of the community, and not just the two big candidates.”
Zimmerman says increasingly races only have two candidates, most always one from the Democratic Party and the other from the Republican Party.
“You don’t even have a third option, and those options are just getting too extreme,” he said.