About Ranked Choice Voting

Ranked Choice Voting is simple. You rank your candidates in order of preference, and can rank as few candidates as you would like.

This is a process that we are all familiar with: When you go to an ice cream store, and find that the store does not have your favorite flavor, do you generally leave the store without any ice cream? Or perhaps more likely, you express your next favorite ice cream flavor. This is what ranked choice voting allows for.

Here's a sample ballot with three candidates: strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla. Tough choices!

Voting tabulation for Ranked Choice Voting works as follows:

If a candidate has over 50% of the vote, that candidate wins.

If no candidate has over 50% of the vote, the candidate with the least number of votes has their votes redistributed to whoever the ballot lists as a second choice. This redistribution process repeats until a candidate accumulates over 50% of the vote.

For multi-seat elections, proportional Ranked Choice Voting can be used.