The Denver Gazette’s Hap Fry reports that ranked choice voting is making its first run in Fort Collins, just in time for a crowded mayoral field and two competitive city council races. Fry’s Oct. 30, 2025 piece sketches the city’s all-out education blitz, led by City Clerk Delynn Coldiron, who has spent weeks explaining how to rank candidates and how instant runoff tabulation works in practice.
According to the Gazette, voters approved the change in 2022 and will now face a seven-candidate mayoral ballot. If no one wins a first-round majority, the last-place finisher drops, ballots are redistributed by next preference, and the process continues until someone crosses 50 percent. Fort Collins is the only Colorado city currently using ranked voting for both mayor and multi-candidate council races, with Broomfield slated to join in 2027. Boulder, Basalt, and Carbondale are set up for mayoral use.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Debut season. Fort Collins is rolling out ranked voting for a seven-way mayoral race plus two council contests.
- City Hall is on tour. The clerk’s office has hit farmer’s markets and podcasts to teach the algorithm to humans.
- How it works. First choices counted. No majority. Eliminate last place and shuffle ballots upward until someone clears 50 percent.
- Odd fit for Colorado. Few cities here use it. Fort Collins is the guinea pig for full citywide implementation.
- Big promise. Less negativity and more consensus. Big risk. More confusion and less confidence when results lag and ballots exhaust.
My Bottom Line
Ranked choice voting sells itself as democracy with training wheels. In reality it is a maze with a smiley face. The pitch is tidy. Put your favorite first, your runner up second, and so on. Let a computer simulate a dozen runoffs while you sleep. The problem is not the math. It is the human factor. Elections should be simple enough to explain at a kitchen table. Ranked systems bury voters in decision trees, raise the cost of campaign education, and then ask citizens to trust a multi-round tabulation most will never fully understand.
Why is it bad in practice. First, complexity creates confusion. Confused voters make fewer choices, or skip ranking beyond their first pick. That leads to exhausted ballots. If your later choices do not cover the surviving finalists, you are out of the final rounds. Your vote does not help choose the winner. That is disenfranchisement by design. Second, ranked tabulation delays confidence. When outcomes hinge on elimination rounds, you rarely get election night clarity. Faith in results sinks when citizens wait days for spreadsheets to tell them who won. Third, it scrambles accountability. Candidates can run as everyone’s second choice and slide into office without ever taking the heat that comes with being a clear first-choice standard bearer.
Why it is almost always bad for conservatives. Conservatives win when coalitions are clear, platforms are distinct, and turnout is disciplined. Ranked systems reward sprawling, personality driven fields where ideological edges get sanded down. The left tends to field numerous adjacent candidates who trade seconds and thirds. The right splits between an outsider and an establishment pick, then watches its first-choice strength evaporate in later rounds. Ranked rules also incentivize hush-tone campaigning. If you want your opponent’s supporters to list you second, you pull punches. That runs against a conservative ethic of plain talk and sharp contrasts. Add in lengthy counts and opaque spreadsheets, and you have a process tailor-made to depress confidence among right-leaning voters who value transparency and speed.
Why it is not a conservative idea. Conservatism prefers institutions that are simple, knowable, and durable. The gold standard is one person, one vote, one count, most votes win. If you want a runoff, hold a runoff that everyone can see. Ranked systems move the action offstage and into software. They replace visible head-to-head accountability with simulated rounds and transfer math few can replicate at home. That is not limited government. That is procedural busywork dressed up as reform.
Why jurisdictions rethink it. Once the novelty wears off, the headlines tell the tale. Confusing ballots. Long counts. Winners who were not the first-round favorite. Voters who made a sincere pick and then got sidelined because their second and third choices did not survive. Election systems live or die on trust. When people cannot easily explain how a winner emerged, trust erodes. At that point communities either scale back or look for alternatives that deliver clarity without the long division.
Here is the conservative fix that works. Keep it simple. If a jurisdiction insists on a majority, use a clean, two-candidate runoff that every voter understands. Or accept a clear plurality with tight filing deadlines and primary rules that produce real choices when it counts. Either path preserves legitimacy. Ranked choice does the opposite. It turns the most sacred civic act into a choose-your-own-adventure novel, then asks the public to accept the ending on faith.
Source: The Denver Gazette
