Ranked-choice voting explained

Explainer·Verified 2026-07-10

The answer

Ranked-choice voting lets you rank candidates instead of picking just one. If no one gets a majority of first choices, the last-place finisher is eliminated and their votes move to whoever those voters ranked next. It's marketed as a fix for vote-splitting. It helps, but it doesn't fully solve it: a real 2009 mayoral election in Burlington, Vermont produced a winner who lost head-to-head to another candidate, and the city repealed RCV the following year.

How it actually works

Voters rank candidates by preference, first, second, third, and so on. If someone wins a majority of first-choice votes outright, they win, same as any election. If not, the candidate in last place is eliminated, and every ballot that ranked them first gets redistributed to that voter's next choice. This repeats round by round until someone has a majority, functioning like an instant runoff without a separate election.

As of March 2026, 49 American jurisdictions use RCV in public elections, or have adopted it for elections ahead, covering nearly 14 million voters across 22 states and DC. Two states, Maine and Alaska, use it statewide. But the trend isn't one-directional: 17 states now ban RCV outright, six of them adding a ban in 2025 alone, and no state expanded it through legislation that year.¹ Alaska itself nearly repealed its system in 2024: Ballot Measure 2 to undo the state's top-four RCV structure failed by just 743 votes after a full recount, the narrowest ballot measure margin in Alaska's history.²

RCV reduces vote-splitting but doesn't eliminate it. Burlington, Vermont's 2009 mayoral election is the clearest documented case: incumbent Bob Kiss won in the final round with 48%, but a head-to-head comparison showed a different candidate, Andy Montroll, was actually preferred by a majority of voters. Montroll had just been eliminated in an earlier round, a known RCV failure mode called center-squeeze. Burlington voters repealed RCV in March 2010, 52% in favor of repeal, before re-adopting it in 2021.³

Who holds the power

State legislatures and, increasingly, citizen ballot initiatives decide whether RCV is used at all (see how-ballot-initiatives-work). This is one of the most actively contested pieces of election mechanics right now, with adoption and repeal measures both appearing on ballots most cycles.

Where you come in

Check whether your city or state uses RCV before an election. If it does, ranking candidates fully, not just your first choice, actually affects which round your vote counts in. See how-to-read-your-ballot for how RCV ballots are formatted.

RCV implementation varies: some jurisdictions eliminate one candidate per round, others batch-eliminate several at once, and some cap how many candidates you can rank. Check your local election office's specific ballot instructions rather than assuming a single national standard.

Glossary: plurality

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