Ranked Choice Voting

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is a method of balloting where you write down the candidates on your ballot in order, from most preferred to least preferred. Similar to how you might rank sports teams or restaurants from best to worst.

When tallying Ranked Choice ballots, you use the same rules for candidate elimination and determining a winner, as you do with multi-round tallying. Using RCV saves time because voters only need to fill out and submit a ballot once, and tallying only happens once per office. RCV also make it more flexible for voters. If they happen to need to leave early, before some offices have come up for a vote, they can fill out their RCV ballot and put it in the ballot box before leaving.

RCV does have some minor disadvantages, primarily that you can’t change your mind between rounds. And it will have some effect on how voters vote, because they need to consider several candidates before voting.