What is Ranked Choice Voting?

In most parts of the United States, voters select a single candidate for each position on their ballot, and the candidate with the most votes wins. This is known as single-choice, winner-take-all, which can sometimes result in the election of a candidate who earned only a small percentage of the vote. But that’s not the only way of electing our leaders.

Ranked choice voting is another voting method which allows voters to rank their favorite candidates in order of preference.

Animation created by Mikhaila Markham.

[TauPhoenii]

This video needs to circulate more this year

[allanjeong]

One main advantage that doesn’t get mentioned or given any emphasis is that RCV increases the power of democracy and collaboration by enabling candidates to adopt ideas proposed by opposing candidates to: 1) win ranked votes from people that support their opponents; and most all 2) add, revise & improve their proposals/solutions in their campaign platforms.

[secularsekai]

I hope to see elections that represent the American people properly within my lifetime. I support you, FairVote

[NikRitchie]

Great video! Let's make ranked choice voting a reality in the 2024 elections!

[HorrorMetalMaestroRedrusty]

Best way to DEMOCRATICALLY vote this country has ever seen. it should be made both a federal law and a constitutional amendment to force ALL states to also use ranked choice voting as it is proven the most democratic way to make sure all votes count and all voiced heard..

[WilliamFord]

#RankedChoiceVoting is _especially_ needed in primaries, where the fields are often crowded. How often to candidates win the primary nomination with ~1/3 of the vote? (Rhetorical)

[SY-tkeg]

How about cons? I am sure there are some. This video was just an ad…

[williampennjr.]

If you can figure out how to rank your votes then figuring out how to get an ID, vote on election day or fill out an absentee ballot should be a breeze.

[steve]

Australia has successfully used ranked choice voting (known as preferential voting here) for over 100 years. It works well in delivering fair outcomes. Third party candidates (and fourth and fifth etc) and independent candidates don’t split the vote. In fact, they often end up winning. One thing, though - we still get lots of negative advertising. It doesn’t stop that.

[KevinThurman]

Your example showed the Yellow Guy winning either way— that ruins the point you are trying to make about RCV. Please repost with the example showing how RCV would end up with a different outcome.

[Lapid]

Greetings from Chile! I personally belive that besides RCV US could have a better political system if it had multy member electoral districts, maybe by joining existing districts so people from one district cand choose more than one representative and it could stimulate DEM and GOP to finally split their factions into parties so people can choose who they want.

[madden]

People say it's confusing, hard and would make it further rig our elections and such? Well, what do you voters want then? Do you want change and make elections more fair or do you want to continue a system that's been rigged for this long? Choose and stop refusing to try something new.

[GaugePadawan]

This assumes that people can rank all the candidates. If somebody only wants to vote for one candidate, then what happens? Is their vote basically invalidated? 🤯

[AmusedChild]

How about "none of the above"?

[jeremylee]

I have a question for experts: will this be more difficult to manage logistically?

[NeverDoubtTheWorm]

Man you did an EXCELLENT job explaining this!! Thank you so much and great job!!

[axw]

We need this in USA. Better than electoral and popular vote alone.

[mikerequadt]

How many times would a person have to vote?

[peterlewis]

I didn't realize ranked choice voting worked quite like this, and it still seems a little bit flawed. This way only works well when only one person can win the election. For example, let's say that you can elect two candidates for a position. If candidate A got 80% in the first round, then they would be elected. But if Candidate B was also very popular, it wouldn't take into account any votes by the people who voted for candidate A above them, and could result in, say, candidate C being elected, even if the majority of voters preferred candidate B over candidate C.

In that scenario, a better way to do this would be to weight the votes. So let's say, something like this:

First Choice - 4 points
Second Choice - 3 points
Third Choice - 2 points
Fourth Choice - 1 point

Then, you'd just add together each candidate's point total, and the highest candidates would win. It seems a lot more logical to me than eliminating and re-shuffling the vote.

[hippiedaveshappyplace]

Is this for each state or popular vote nationwide?