The AP and other elitist media organs are reporting that the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that IRV or what they are now calling “ranked choice voting” is constitutional. This is not accurate.
The AP article listed on KSTP.com said: ” But the Supreme Court said the IRV method adopted by Minneapolis does not violate the U.S. or Minnesota constitutions, so Minneapolis is free to try it. The decision affirmed a lower-court decision that also backed the system.”
Minneapolis will be allowed to implement IRV, but the above statement is FALSE. The Court did NOT rule IRV constitutional. Neither did the District Court.
The District Court agreed with the Minnesota Voters Alliance claims that IRV is non-monotonic, i.e. that a voter can harm his favorite candidate by raising that candidate in rank, but merely ruled that since the same law applied to everyone it was “an acceptable risk.”
The Minnesota Supreme Court side-stepped the constitutional issue by ruling that because the lawsuit was making claims about what could happen or might happen in the future, and not about things that have happened, that the plaintiffs didn’t prove their case.
In other words, they effectively dismissed the case because there was no actual election from which to derive facts and show that an actual disenfranchisement occured. The ruling was based on a flimsy technicality.
The Supreme Court made the same mistake the District Court made in ignoring the constitutional arguments and jumping on the “let’s-see-what-happens” bandwagon – clearly a dereliction of their judicial duty.
The Court said regarding the claims that IRV will save money and make elections more fair, etc.: “Whether and to what degree implementation of IRV will achieve those benefits remains to be seen. But it is plausible that IRV may advance one or more of these interests.”
So, the Court ruled against the plainiff because the complaint was merely about what could or might happen, yet ruled for IRV because of benefits it may provide. This is judicial self-contradiction!
But the good news is that IRV is still open to constitutional challenge once an actual IRV election takes place in Minnesota.
The Minnesota Voters Alliance plans to be there when the chaos caused by IRV is in full view to everyone so that even a supreme court justice can’t ignore it.
- Matt Marchetti
*This is not necessarily the official position of the MN Voters Alliance
You can see attorney Erick Kaardal’s response here: http://neopopulism.org/
Posted by mnvoters 