| Hannah Davis-Reid | VPM |
In Tuesday’s City Council primary, Charlottesville is about to become the second locality in Virginia — after Arlington County — to use ranked choice voting, after a century of using a winner-take-all block system.
respects diversity by design
Former Charlottesville Del. Sally Hudson, now executive director of Ranked Choice Virginia and fellow at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, said the change creates a system that “respects diversity by design.”
“If there’s someone you really like, but you give a second or a third vote to one of the other candidates, you’re supporting one of their opponents, and so you could actually make it harder to get your favorite elected, and rank choice gets rid of that problem,” she said.