Ranked-choice voting (RCV) is a simple improvement to the way we vote. Vote for candidates in the order you prefer: 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, and so on. If your favorite can’t win, your vote counts for your next choice.
Ranked-choice voting is the fastest-growing non-partisan reform in the U.S. Voters who try ranked-choice voting say it’s simple and they want to keep using it.
More women and people of color run and win with ranked-choice voting, so governments better reflect their communities.
Ranked-choice voting gives you more say. Vote for who you really want, then rank your backup choices. No more voting for the lesser of two evils.
Ranked-choice voting rewards politicians who reach beyond their base to build common ground, producing civil, issue-focused campaigns that focus on solutions.
There are many benefits of ranked-choice voting. Here are just a few:
More Choice, More Say
Ranked-choice voting gives you the option to support your favorite candidate without worrying about throwing away your vote or accidentally helping to elect your least favorite candidate. If your favorite can’t win, your vote counts for your backup choice. You no longer have to vote for the lesser of two evils.
More Issue-Focused Campaigns
Ranked-choice voting encourages candidates to speak to ALL voters — not just their narrow base of supporters. That’s because candidates are also competing for second and third choice votes. In ranked-choice voting contests, candidates do best when they reach out positively to as many voters as possible, including those supporting their opponents.
Voice for Communities
Ranked-choice voting ensures that elected officials better reflect their communities.
With ranked-choice voting, you can rank candidates on your ballot in the order you prefer: 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, and so on. If your favorite can’t win, your vote counts for your next choice.
Ranked-choice voting is as simple as choosing a flavor of ice cream. You’ll ask for your favorite flavor, but if that choice isn’t available, you’ll opt for a backup choice. Why not have the same amount of say in who your elected officials are?
No! You can mark one candidate as your first choice and leave everything else blank, or you can choose to rank as many candidates as you want. That’s totally up to you!
This voter’s first choice is hemlock. If they can’t have that, cedar is their next choice, then pine. Ranked-choice voting means that this voter is more likely to end up with a tree that they like.
All of the first-choice votes are counted. If one candidate gets more than half the votes, they win – just like in any other election. However, if no candidate gets more than half of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. If your candidate was eliminated, your ballot goes to your next choice! That elimination process repeats until a candidate has majority of the votes.
Your vote will always count for the candidate you liked the most that has a chance at winning.
Right now, our politics are dangerously divisive and election season feels like a battle for who can be the “lesser-evil”. Ranked-choice voting can change that. When voters can rank their choices, candidates have to reach out to everyone — even voters that support other candidates as their first choice.
Ranked-choice voting can also let voters cast a more honest ballot. Under our current method, voters may feel pressured to vote for a candidate they don’t really like because they want to prevent a candidate they dislike strongly from winning. This is called “strategic voting”, and it’s not good for voters or candidates. With ranked-choice voting, voters don’t have to worry about whether their candidate is “electable” or “viable” because they can rank backup choices in case their first choice can’t win.
Finally, ranked-choice voting reduces “vote splitting” where similar candidates splinter the support from a similar portion of the electorate. Often, one of the candidates who is splitting the vote may feel forced to drop out of the race out of fear of harming their own agenda’s chances of success. With ranked-choice voting, that candidate won’t have to drop out and can tell their supporters to rank them first and a similar candidate second.
Ranked-choice voting addresses these problems and more, and all voters have to do is cast their ballot honestly!
As of October 2025, 52 jurisdictions currently use ranked-choice voting to elect their officials, reaching nearly 14 million voters across 23 states and Washington, DC.
The biggest jurisdiction that uses ranked-choice voting is New York City. Two states, Maine and Alaska, use ranked-choice voting statewide; 39 cities and 3 counties use it for local elections. One state uses ranked-choice voting for special elections, and six states and one city use ranked-choice voting ballots for military and overseas voters in runoff elections.
Yes! Places that use ranked-choice often see more women and people of color running for office and winning elections. This is part of why voters feel better represented when they can rank their choices.
Places that use ranked-choice voting often see more women and people of color running for office and winning elections. This is part of why voters feel better represented when they can rank their choices.
Additionally, ranked-choice voting makes running for office more feasible for first-time candidates because they don’t need to worry about splitting the vote with other like-minded candidates. They also don’t need to engage in negative campaigning in order to have a fair shot at winning, and they don’t need to raise as much money in order to be competitive.
Candidates in ranked-choice voting races have a strong incentive to reach out with a positive message to all voters and to avoid mudslinging for fear of alienating voters who are supporting other candidates. If a candidate can’t earn your first-choice support, they still want to earn your second- or third-choice support.
Ranked-choice voting simply elects the candidates most preferred by the voters, regardless of whether that’s a Republican, Democrat, independent, or minor party candidate. Ranked-choice voting has been enacted in Republican-controlled Utah, Democrat-controlled California, and the “purple” state of Maine. The movement for ranked-choice voting here in Washington state includes members of every political persuasion, all coming together to give more power to voters.
Yes. With ranked-choice voting, every voter gets exactly one vote, and each vote is treated equally. Ranked-choice voting has weathered several legal challenges and every court has agreed that ranked-choice voting gives each vote equal weight.
Yes! Ranked-choice voting is used to refer to a few different variations on the same idea. You might also hear the term “Instant Runoff Voting,” which is the form most used in the United States for choosing one winner. Many election experts recommend “Single Transferable Vote” or “Proportional Ranked-Choice Voting” for equitably electing officials to multi-member governmental bodies. You can read about different types of ranked-choice voting on the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center’s website.
Imagine you vote in a ranked-choice voting election, but you only vote for your top favorite, or top few. If the choices you ranked get eliminated, then your vote won’t affect the contest between the other candidates and it might not sway the outcome. Some people refer to ballots that don’t affect the final outcome as “exhausted”.
This isn’t unique to ranked-choice voting elections, though. In fact, the problem is far worse in traditional elections where those votes are referred to as “wasted votes”. Because traditional elections don’t let voters rank backup choices, voters are far more likely to waste a vote on a candidate who won’t win.
Ranked-choice voting makes it more likely that your vote will matter.
The top-two primary is a type of primary election in which all candidates are listed on the same primary ballot. The top two vote-getters, regardless of their partisan affiliations, advance to the general election. Therefore, it is possible for two candidates belonging to the same political party to advance in a top-two primary and face off in the general election.
In Washington, voters are not required to register for a political party and do not have to declare a party affiliation to vote – except in Presidential Primaries.
Ranked-choice voting and Top-2 actually have common roots, but ranked-choice voting expands on the benefits of top-2.
Ranked-choice voting gives you more choices on the ballot, produces more civil, issue-based campaigns, and can be used to combine the primary and general election together to save money and boost voter engagement. Ranked-choice voting is also associated with more equitable representation for communities of color and voters overwhelmingly like the method.
For these reasons, Washington and places within Washington would be well-served by adopting ranked-choice voting.
The Final-Five Voting concept involves a nonpartisan, top-5 primary with a ranked-choice voting general election.
In a Final-Five Voting primary, all candidates running for the office will appear on a single ballot, and all voters can participate in the primary regardless of whether they are registered with a party or not. In the primary, voters do not rank candidates.
In the general election, voters rank the 5 candidates in their order of preference (ranking as many or as few as they want). Votes are counted in the same way as in a standard ranked-choice voting election.
This method of voting is being championed by the Institute for Political Innovation.
In 2020, Alaska passed Ballot Measure 2 which had a top-4 version of this concept.
Come chat with us at an online or in-person event. We’d love to hear what you think about ranked-choice voting and answer your questions.
Or check out our YouTube channel for our webinar recordings and more great RCV resources.
