Ranked Choice Voting

Brief
January 1, 2020
Election Reformers Network

Elections in the United States are facing an unprecedented challenge: a huge increase in the number of candidates running for office.

This is the context that makes ranked choice voting such an important reform. The traditional method for determining the winner in U.S. elections (“simple plurality” or “first past the post”) works well when two candidates are running. But in crowded races with many candidates, this system can easily result in winners with low percentages of the vote, who may not be preferred by, or even be in step with, the majority.

In 2018, 146 U.S. House primaries had five or more candidates, and 212 had four or more—by far the most in U.S. history. This surge in candidates reflects the takeover by the grassroots of the candidate nominating process that in the past was controlled by the political parties.

This context makes it certain some elections will result in winners supported by only a slim fraction of the electorate.

Our research found that, on average, members who entered Congress after winning a primary with less than 35 percent support are significantly more partisan than those who win with majority support. In other words, the mechanics of how we vote help foster the growing partisan rift that is so detrimental to our politics.

The solution is using the mechanism of ranked choice voting to translate this new, many-faceted rush of participation into results that represent the majority.

With RCV, voters mark a ballot designed to show first, second, and third choices (or more). The ballots are then counted in rounds (called “instant runoff”) in which the least-supported candidate is eliminated at each round. By taking into account multiple preferences, ranked choice ensures, in nearly all cases, that the winner is voted for by the majority and is the most preferred candidate.

The ranked choice mechanism shifts election results to the center of the electorate and to more representative nominees. Because candidates need to heed a larger electorate beyond their core supporters, RCV also makes campaigning less negative and promotes more collaborative approaches and candidates. RCV is used in a half-dozen countries around the world and in  growing number of cities and states around the country. Evaluations show that voters prefer it to simple plurality.

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Election Reformers Network has been supporting ranked choice voting since 2017.

The grants we have given to help advocate for RCV:

Articles we have published advocating for RCV: