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Ranked choice voting (RCV) is a voting method that gives voters the freedom to rank candidates in order of preference. It helps ensure the winning candidate has support from the most possible voters. It improves healthy competition and accountability, incentivizing elected leaders to do their jobs better.
How Ranked Choice Voting Works
Instead of picking just one candidate, you can rank as many as you like on your ballot, in order of preference 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc..
If a candidate receives more than 50% of the first choice votes, that candidate wins. However, if no candidate has more than 50% of the first choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and voters who picked that candidate as their first choice have their second choice votes counted. This process continues until a candidate has more than 50% of the votes.
Watch this 90-second video about how RCV works.
Use this interactive website rcv123.org to try a practice Ranked Choice Voting ballot or set up a Ranked Choice Voting poll.
Ranked Choice Voting:
- Promotes majority support
- Provides more choices for voters
- Increases accountability of elected leaders
- Minimizes vote splitting
- Minimizes strategic voting
- Discourages negative campaigning
- Encourages broad coalition building
- Saves money when replacing preliminary or runoff elections
- Improves voter turnout
- Increases participation from military and overseas voters
- Promotes reflective representation
More Ranked Choice Voting Resources:
- Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center
- FairVote - data on RCV
- Radiolab: Tweak the Vote
- CGP Grey's Youtube Series on Voting Systems
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