Ranked-choice voting plan for Annapolis prompts flurry of opinions at meeting

Sep

2025

Capital Gazette

Ranked-choice voting plan for Annapolis prompts flurry of opinions at meeting

The prospect of making Annapolis the second Maryland jurisdiction to use ranked-choice voting in local elections drew 20 residents and advocates to speak out Monday at the Annapolis City Council meeting.

Most of the speakers supported proposed legislation to establish the mechanism in Annapolis.

The ordinance, sponsored by Ward 1 Alderman Harry Huntley, would make party primaries and general elections in city elections determined by ranked choice voting.

Under ranked choice voting, voters rank multiple candidates on their ballot in order of preference. When votes are first tallied, they are counted based on the top-ranked candidate on each ballot. If no candidate earns a majority of the votes, the votes from the candidate with the fewest number of votes get sent to each ballot’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until a candidate has a majority of the votes. ...

Owen Anderson, deputy director of Ranked Choice Voting Maryland, said this process allows for more voters’ ballots to count towards the final election winner and that it could increase public participation in elections. ...

Ron Gunzburger, a Democratic candidate for Ward 1 alderman ... has pushed back against ranked-choice voting, arguing that the system favors candidates who are more extreme, especially in party primaries. If ranked choice voting is implemented, Gunzburger said, it would be more effective to use it in a non-partisan primary.

Gunzburger argued a more effective voting system would be to move to a [nonpartisan] general primary. All candidates, regardless of party, Gunzburger said, would appear on the ballot. If no candidate had a majority of votes, then the top two candidates would move on to a general election.

Annapolis, Baltimore and Frederick are the only three Maryland cities that have partisan local elections.

Members of the City Council did not speak much during the public hearing, except Ward 6 Alderman DaJuan Gay, who expressed concern about what he called an “uncivil political race” in New York City’s mayoral primary this year, which used ranked-choice voting. ...

Source: https://www.capitalgazette.com/2025/09/09/annapolis-ranked-choice-voting/