In the United States, voters typically choose single candidates on their ballots, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. In a ranked-choice election, voters instead rank candidates in order of preference. After the election is over, only first-choice votes are counted. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated from consideration, and the votes for that candidate are reassigned to the candidate’s supporters’ second choices. This process is repeated until a single candidate has more than fifty percent of the vote, ensuring majority support.
Jurisdictions in the U.S. have increasingly implemented ranked-choice voting (RCV) for various contests, including for federal elections in Alaska and Maine. Prominent local elections, including in New York and San Francisco, also use the system. The precise rules of the system vary from state to state. Alaska, for example, allows four candidates to advance to general elections and selects among them using RCV. Maine, on the other hand, uses RCV in both traditional party primaries and the November general election.
How could RCV be a good policy?
Ranked-choice voting is meant to ensure that winning candidates command majority support in the electorate. In plurality-based races without RCV — sometimes called “first-past-the-post” elections — three or more candidates can split the electorate, resulting in winners with well under 40 percent support. Moreover, in these traditional contests, so-called “spoiler candidates” with only small shares of support can also determine very close races even while they have little chance of winning themselves. In RCV elections, such candidates would be eliminated and their votes reassigned if no candidate receives a majority of votes, guarding against the influence of spoilers in narrow contests. A 2023 study showed that by a variety of measures, RCV elections are less affected by spoiler candidates than plurality ones. At the same time, RCV can encourage more candidates to run in the race, precisely because concerns about acting as spoilers are minimal. More people might choose to run for office when prospective candidates no longer worry about unintentional adverse results of their participation, potentially increasing the number of options for voters.
Proponents of RCV argue that the system has positive impacts beyond its simple mechanics. When candidates are campaigning for second- and even third-choice votes, they might have stronger incentives to appeal to broader sectors of the electorate, thereby promoting moderation and depolarization. FairVote, an RCV advocacy group, cites the 2022 elections in Alaska as an example of this effect: Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, two moderates who endorsed each other, won on the same ranked-choice ballot; FairVote writes that the result reflected Alaska’s “ideological diversity.”
There is also evidence that RCV can encourage candidates to conduct more civil campaigns. When candidates rely on secondary support, there is a higher cost to alienating opponents’ voters, so attacks against competing candidates lose appeal. A 2021 analysis of campaign communications in local elections across the U.S. found that examples from races using RCV used more positive language than those from plurality races, supporting the civility theory.
What are the downsides of using RCV?
RCV is not always simple to implement. Results in RCV elections generally face delays compared to those for plurality ones, which can be tabulated more quickly; for example, Alaska’s Division of Elections did not release any ranked-choice returns for 15 days after its 2022 elections. Some argue there is a higher risk of error in more complex RCV tabulation. In a high-profile example, the New York City Board of Elections accidentally included 135,000 “test ballots” in results for the 2021 mayoral race before catching its mistake, causing widespread confusion. Moreover, introducing RCV could burden local bodies already straining to conduct elections.
Voting in RCV elections is also more complicated for voters than in single-choice ones, which some argue can increase the risk of mistakes on ballots that disqualify votes. Less informed voters who do not take advantage of the opportunity to rank multiple candidates can be disadvantaged if their ballot is eliminated (and therefore not counted), a situation known as “ballot exhaustion.” Some opponents say this results in systematic disparities, but evidence on the subject is mixed. Many advocates recommend voter education efforts to ensure voters take advantage of RCV and to minimize the risk of ballot exhaustion.
There is also a risk that the electorate views results of RCV elections as less legitimate than those of traditional first-past-the-post ones, especially when the winner is not the candidate who receives the most first-place votes. A George Washington University study found that these “come-from-behind victories” lead to greater voter dissatisfaction. More generally, voters can perceive RCV elections as less transparent, since determining winners relies on a less intuitive process than they are used to. There are already signs of mistrust in some examples. In the 2021 New York mayoral race, some allies of the eventual winner, Eric Adams suggested that the system was perpetrating “voter suppression” of minority voters when it appeared that another candidate might overtake Adams’s early lead in later rounds of tabulation.
Alternatives and variants
Runoff elections between the top two vote-getters in a given election aim to solve many of the same problems as RCV, and according to the George Washington University study, are often seen as more legitimate by the public. Nevertheless, proponents argue that RCV is more efficient and reliable, especially since runoffs often have lower turnout rates than general elections. RCV is sometimes called instant-runoff voting, because it eliminates lower-performing candidates and evaluates top performers immediately rather than requiring another election to do so.
Ranked-choice voting is not identical in every jurisdiction: Distinct forms include the four-candidate ranked-choice system in Alaska and various ranking and tabulation methods for races in which multiple candidates win. Its use is only growing. According to a Ballotpedia count, 31 states have introduced legislation concerning RCV, and the use of RCV will itself be on the ballot in three states in 2024. Advocates say the system is a democratic reform that will improve consensus, while others view it as inefficient and unfair. Either way, ranked-choice voting is increasingly a part of the political conversation in the U.S.
