By SUZANNE DOWNING
Jan. 27, 2026 – Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is one of the clearest real-world examples of what ranked-choice voting produces in modern American politics.
Frey was elected to all three of his terms as mayor of Minneapolis under ranked-choice voting, the voting system that Alaskans approved of in 2020 for all state and federal elections, and which Alaskans are trying to repeal.
Minneapolis has used it for municipal elections since 2009. Frey’s political survival, even through repeated national controversies, has been made possible not by majority first-choice support, but by redistributed preferences in multi-round tabulations.
Frey first won the mayoralty in 2017 after multiple rounds of ranked tabulation. He was re-elected in 2021 after two rounds. Most recently, he secured a third term on Nov. 4, again through ranked-choice redistribution rather than first-round majority support.
In the 2025 election, Frey received approximately 41.7% of first-choice votes (61,444 ballots). No candidate reached the 50% threshold in the first round. After second-choice votes were redistributed, Frey reached 50.03% (73,723 votes) and won re-election.
In all three races, Frey failed to win an outright first-round majority. Each victory depended on the ranked-choice system reallocating votes from eliminated candidates — a structure that allows candidates to win without being the top choice of most voters, so long as they remain acceptable to enough secondary blocs.
Frey’s tenure has been shaped less by stability than by recurring political and civic upheaval, beginning with the 2020 George Floyd unrest.
During the protests and riots that followed Floyd’s death, Frey became a national figure amid a series of highly visible controversies. On May 28, 2020, Frey approved the evacuation of the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct station as unrest escalated. The building was later overrun and burned, after he had surrendered public infrastructure to rioters.
A 2022 independent review concluded that the city failed to fully activate its emergency operations framework during the initial days of unrest, contributing to poor coordination, communication failures, and uneven response. The report cited leadership breakdowns at the top of city government.
Frey faced criticism from the political right for failing to restore order quickly, and from the left for resisting radical restructuring of policing — leaving him politically isolated between ideological factions.
Yet Frey remained in office, protected by a political system that rewards coalition survivability more than majority consensus.
In 2026, Frey again is in the national spotlight, this time over immigration enforcement.
Amid federal ICE operations under the Trump administration, Minneapolis is now a focal point of protests, unrest, and national attention following fatal shootings involving federal agents and violent rioters Renee Nicole Good (Jan. 7) and Alex Pretti (Jan. 24).
Frey responded with some of the most aggressive municipal rhetoric toward federal law enforcement in the country. He publicly demanded ICE leave Minneapolis, stating, “We are demanding that ICE leave the city and state immediately.” In a widely shared video statement, Frey said: “ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis… Somebody is dead. That’s on you.”
Frey has reaffirmed Minneapolis’ sanctuary status and declared the city would not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and repeatedly framed ICE as an “occupying force,” blamed federal operations for unrest, and said calm would not return until agents left the city.
Following direct calls with President Trump, Frey announced that some federal agents would begin leaving the city, though he continued pressing for a full withdrawal from what federal officials called “Operation Metro Surge.”
Frey’s career now spans two eras of national unrest – 2020 and 2026, which he handled in ways that emboldened violent unrest. Yet he remains in office, not because he commands broad first-choice voter majorities, but because ranked-choice voting structurally rewards candidates who can survive successive rounds of elimination rather than win outright public mandates.
In Minneapolis, ranked-choice voting has eliminated traditional primaries and runoff elections, replacing them with algorithmic tabulation systems that redistribute political legitimacy rather than require it directly.
His three elections show a consistent pattern of leadership sustained through redistribution rather than consensus. In practice, it creates political insulation, creating leaders who can survive controversy not by broad public support, but by remaining the least-objectionable option in divided political fields.
As ranked-choice voting expands nationally into more cities and states, Minneapolis now stands as a case study. Jacob Frey is what that system looks like in power.
4 thoughts on “Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: A ranked-choice voting case study”
That’s why you don’t vote for a second or third choice. You do hate the choice to exhaust your ballot after one vote. Refuse to play the RCV game just like refuse playing an abusers mental games by just holding you tongue and walk away.
Your silence will perplex your abuser just like your only vote on a RCV ballot will do to RCV supporter.
Your silence isn’t disobedience. It’s strength not to diminish yourself.
That really explains everything that is going on there!!!! And Alaskans need to pay close attention this next election. VOTE RCV OUT THIS TIME!!!! Enough already!!!
Was RCV ever anything more than a carnival shell game, intended to offer the illusion of voter choice, while operating on corrupted voter registrations, fraudulent voting, and fraudulent vote-counting to get results sponsors pay for?
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No? How about this:
“Minnesota lets voters ‘vouch’ for up to 8 others as fraud scandals fuel calls for federal crackdown”
“Minnesota House Fraud Committee discusses voter registration fraud”
(www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/minnesota-lets-voters-vouch-for-up-to-8-others-as-fraud-scandals-fuel-calls-for-federal-crackdown/ar-AA1TeTLd)
(https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/minnesota-house-fraud-committee-discusses-voter-registration-fraud/)
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Remember, there’s no ballot audit trail after the second round of RCV, nobody knows how vote-tabulation machines running on company-owned software actually work when votes are “redistributed” during RCV rounds, we do know anybody can stick a thumb drive in them any time during vote-counting …so nobody can ever know -or verify- what the real vote count was.
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All this before we get to fraudulent voter registration and mail-in voting …we do remember the Great Alaska LeDoux Vote Experiment, no?
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So what’s the difference in potential for election fraud between Minneapolis and Anchorage?
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If RCV is the common factor between the two cities and leadership’s ideology in both cities is similar, is it reasonable to assume the corruption necessary for RCV to operate in one city must also be necessary for RCV to operate in the other city?
Alaska’s Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) system, implemented in 2022 alongside a top-four open primary, stands as a convoluted, anti-democratic disaster that has delivered confusion, disenfranchisement, and manipulated outcomes rather than the promised “better elections.”
The system’s core flaw is its complexity: instead of letting voters simply choose their preferred candidate, it forces them to rank multiple options they may know little about. Most Alaskans don’t closely follow every race, yet RCV pressures them into ranking lesser-known or disliked candidates on little more than guesswork. This breeds widespread confusion, higher rates of spoiled or “exhausted” ballots (where votes vanish after a voter’s top choices are eliminated), and outright disenfranchisement. In the 2022 special congressional election, thousands of ballots were effectively discarded when voters supported only one candidate—disproportionately harming straightforward Republican preferences.
The infamous 2022 U.S. House special election epitomizes RCV’s betrayal. Despite roughly 60% of first-choice votes going to Republicans (Palin + Begich), Democrat Mary Peltola won after second-choice reallocation. Critics rightly called this outcome rigged: a minority-preference candidate triumphed because the system diluted and redistributed votes in opaque rounds of tabulation that can defy intuitive majority will. (Even mathematical quirks showed Begich hypothetically beating both opponents head-to-head, yet still losing under RCV rules.) Republicans saw this as a mechanism that punishes party-loyal candidates and rewards moderates or Democrats in a conservative-leaning state—exactly why national GOP figures labeled it a “scam” designed to thwart conservatives.
Worse still, RCV delays results for weeks (Alaska waits 15+ days just to start full tabulation), erodes trust, and invites endless controversy. It rewards strategic gaming over sincere voting and disproportionately burdens less-informed or time-constrained voters, tilting power toward political elites who understand the system.
Alaska’s narrow failure to repeal RCV in 2024 (by a mere 664 votes after massive out-of-state spending to preserve it) does not redeem the scheme, it exposes how entrenched interests have foisted a flawed, confusing experiment on voters. Far from enhancing democracy, Alaska’s RCV has proven a costly, opaque vehicle for minority rule, voter suppression via exhaustion, and partisan manipulation dressed up as reform. It deserves swift abolition before it further erodes faith in fair elections.