Lawmakers scrapped Fargo's novel voting system. Tuesday's mayoral election goes back to basics

Fargo will select a new mayor and two other city commissioners Tuesday. Five candidates are vying to replace Mayor Tim Mahoney, who is term-limited, and eight candidates are running for the two open commission spots.

But voters will have fewer votes to dole out this time around.

It’s Fargo’s first election since the North Dakota Legislature forced it to stop using a new voting system called “approval voting” and go back to the old, traditional voting method. The last time it was used in Fargo was 2018, the same year Fargo voters overwhelmingly supported overhauling their voting system.

But what is approval voting?

“Approval voting is dead simple,” said Jed Limke, founder of Reform Fargo, the group that led the effort to switch to the voting system. “It's almost the same, but it's cleverly different just where it needs to be.”





https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/06/09/fargo-mayoral-election-return-to-traditional-voting