Ranked Choice Voting

Wikipedia Single Transferable Vote

by Wikipedia

The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV)[a] is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternative preferences if their preferred candidate is eliminated or elected with surplus votes, so that their vote is used to elect someone they prefer over others in the running. STV aims to approach proportional representation based on votes cast in the district where it is used, so that each vote is worth about the same as another.

STV is a family of multi-winner proportional representation electoral systems. The proportionality of its results and the proportion of votes actually used to elect someone are equivalent to those produced by proportional representation election systems based on lists. STV systems can be thought of as a variation on the largest remainders method that uses candidate-based solid coalitions, rather than party lists.[clarification needed][1] Surplus votes belonging to winning candidates (those in excess of an electoral quota) may be thought of as remainder votes. Surplus votes may be transferred from a successful candidate to another candidate and then possibly used to elect that candidate.

Ranking Candidates Is More Accurate Than Voting

Scientific American Article on RCV 2004

Thus, true majority rule and rank-order voting result in dramatically different outcomes. Considering this sharp contrast, it may seem hard to say which method is better at capturing the essence of voters’ views. But we propose to do just that. We can evaluate these two systems—and any other—according to some fundamental principles that any electoral method should satisfy. Kenneth J. Arrow of Stanford University originated this axiomatic approach to voting theory in a 1951 monograph, a work that has profoundly shaped the voting literature.

Ranked choice voting is a victory for San Francisco voters

FairVote.org SF Mayoral Article

Ranked choice voting offers a proven solution for voters. RCV played a key role in last year’s exciting high turnout mayoral and city council wins in Minneapolis and St. Paul by people of color, LGBTQ candidates, and other underrepresented communities. Bay Area’s four cities with RCV have seen significant increases in representation of women and people of color. When San Franciscan first adopted RCV, it led the nation on a plethora of social issues, and voting in a fair, inclusive process is part of that progress.

Maine ranked-choice voting as a case of electoral-system change

Journal of Representative Democracy 7/25/2018

Ranked-choice voting (RCV) manufactures an electoral majority in a fragmented candidate field. For RCV to pass at referendum, part of a reform coalition must be willing to lose election to the other part of that coalition, typically an out-of-power major party. A common enemy enables this sort of coalition by assuring (a) the out-of-power party of sufficient transfer votes to win and (b) a winner that junior reform partners prefer to the incumbent. I test this logic against the November 2016 adoption of RCV in Maine. First, I show that the most recent, runner-up party overwhelmingly supplied votes to the ‘yes’ side. I also show elite endorsements tending to come from this party, albeit not exclusively. Then I show a drift in the mass of public opinion, such that reform partners could coordinate. RCV is likely to find favour where voter preferences are polarised and lopsided, and where multiple candidates split the larger ideological bloc.

“More Choices and More Power”: How the Ranked-Choice Ballot Is Changing NYC Elections

by DEMOCRACY NOW 20/6/25

As New Yorkers head to the polls in the primaries for upcoming local elections, voters will have the chance to vote for not one, but up to five of their preferred candidates for mayor and other races. R

Maine Is Trying Out A New Way To Run Elections. But Will It Survive The Night?

by Nathaniel Rakich 12/6/18 FIVETHIRTYEIGHT

The man who lives in the Blaine House in Augusta, Maine, was, for many, a sneak preview of the 45th president of the United States. Like Donald Trump, Republican Gov. Paul LePage has transformed the face of government with his politically incorrect brand of conservatism — and he did it despite winning less than a majority of votes. LePage won a seven-way Republican primary for governor in 2010 with 37 percent of the vote, and he beat a Democrat and three independents in the general with just 38 percent.

How open primaries and ranked-choice voting can help break partisan gridlock

by Judy Woodruff, Connor Seitchik, Christine Romo 29/5/25 PBS NEWS

A major political upset in Alaska as a Democrat won the state’s only seat in the U.S. House. Former state lawmaker Mary Peltola defeated former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a special election to replace former Congressman Don…

Ranked voting in Maine a go for presidential election

by David Sharp 22/9/20 PBS NEWS

The Supreme Judicial Court concluded that the Maine Republican Party failed to reach the threshold of signatures needed for a “People’s Veto” referendum aimed at rejecting a state law that expands ranked choice voting to the presidential election.

What’s Wrong with Ranked Choice Voting

by ADRIAN KUZMINSKI 30/3/20 COUNTERPUNCH

An electoral reform popular with many political activists and commentators is ranked choice voting, also called cumulative or preferential voting.

In 'Historic Victory', Maine Voters Demand Ranked-Choice Voting in Statewide Elections...Again

by Julia Conley 13/6/18 Common Dreams

Voters across Maine reiterated their support for ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the state's primary election, with 74 percent of precincts reporting that more than 54 percent had voted in favor of the system--an even higher approval rating than the system got in November 2016 when it first appeared on ballots.

'Huge Win for Democracy': Nationwide Celebrations as NYC Residents Approve Ranked-Choice Voting Ballot Measure

by Jessica Corbett 6/11/19 Common Dreams

NYC's ranked-choice voting (RCV) measure was supported by a number of advocacy groups, politicians, and even The New York Times editorial board, which called the question the "most exciting proposal" of the five measures considered by city voters Tuesday.

Portland elects progressive mayor and most diverse city council

by Dani Anguiano 12/11/24 The Guardian

In 2022 it appeared the political winds in Portland, Oregon, one of the US’s most progressive cities, were beginning to shift. Residents who had grown frustrated over the city’s approach to homelessness rejected the incumbent, Jo Ann Hardesty – the first Black woman to serve on the city council – in favor of the “law-and-order” Democrat Rene Gonzalez, who pledged to back an expanded police force and “clean up” Portland.

'Momentum for Better Elections' as Maine Supreme Court Approves Ranked-Choice Voting for 2018 Elections

by Julia Conley 18/4/18 Common Dreams

Election reform advocates on Wednesday praised a decision by Maine's Supreme Court, upholding the use of ranked-choice voting for the state's upcoming primary elections, saying the ruling demonstrated that the court heeded the demands of Maine voters.

In St. Louis, Voters Will Get To Vote For As Many Candidates As They Want

by Nathaniel Rakich 1/3/21 FiveThirtyEight

When voters head to the polls Tuesday to pick St. Louis’s next mayor,1 they’ll be faced with four names on the ballot. But unlike in most other elections, they won’t have to choose just one candidate to vote for. Instead, St. Louisans will experiment with a new form of voting that allows them to vote for as many candidates as they like.

Despite Broad Popularity, GOP Moves to Ban Ranked-Choice Voting at Local Level

by Julia Conley 29/4/22 Common Dreams

Buried in a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida this week is a provision that will eliminate Floridians' ability to use ranked-choice voting to decide their elections--as people in at least two cities there have voted to do--making DeSantis the latest GOP leader to ban the broadly popular voting reform.

Millions of Democratic votes were lost in the primaries. Is this the fix?

by the guardian org. 11/3/20 The Guardian

In Colorado and Texas, early voters for candidates other than Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders might have made a statement, but they didn’t have the chance to influence the primary election. Some of the estimated 20% of Californians who voted early asked for a do-over. In Minnesota, 40,000 people had reportedly cast their ballots a week before Super Tuesday – and days before Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out.

How Do You Poll A ‘Ranked Choice Voting’ Election?

by Nate Silver and Galen Druke 21/5/21 FiveThirtyEight

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Nate Silver and Galen Druke open the mailbag and answer listeners’ questions about politics, polling and more.

Ranked-Choice Voting: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

by Howie Hawkins 28/4/20 COUNTERPUNCH

Climate activist Bill McKibben took to the New Yorker recently to advise me and the Green Party to stand down our presidential campaign and instead work for ranked-choice voting (RCV) so we don’t “spoil” the election for Joe Biden (“Instead of Challenging Joe Biden, Maybe the Green Party Could Help Change Our Democracy,” April 15).

The Sleeper Issue of the Midterms: Rank Choice Voting

by Nick Licata 7/11/22 COUNTERPUNCH

Flying under the radar this Election Day are cities, counties, and one state voting to accept rank choice voting (RCV). This isn’t the first time there has been a wave of support for RCV. From 1912 and 1930, some forms of RCV were used, but most were repealed by the mid-thirties. There was another burst of support for them in 2009-2010, that petered out as well

Ranked Choice Voting ‘Allows You to Vote for the Person You Really Like’

by Janine Jackson 13/11/19 FAIR

Janine Jackson: As media critics in election season, our preeminent concern is less how fair the press are to this or that candidate, than how fair they are to the public. That means substantive reporting, not just on candidates, their records and proposals, but on the voting process itself, and specifically the distance between the system we have and the democracy we rhetorically invoke, and that some of us actually seek.

Rob Richie on Ranked Choice Voting, Netfa Freeman on Police Militarization

by CounterSpin 8/11/19 FAIR

This week on CounterSpin: The November 5 elections had some big news: Virginia Democrats flipping both houses of the state legislature and, as we record, something very much still happening in the race for Kentucky governor.

Sarah Palin loses Alaska special election to Democrat Mary Peltola

by Associated Press 1/9/22 The Guardian

The Democrat Mary Peltola has won the special election for Alaska’s only US House seat, besting a field that included the Republican Sarah Palin, who was seeking a political comeback in the state where she was once governor.

Concerns with Instant Runoff and Ranked Choice voting systems and how we may need to do better.

by Noodles 14/4/24 DAILY KOS

This is boosted from a comment I made earlier today. Our usual method of voting is plurality voting. Also called One Past The Post voting. Winner takes all. And often, if not usually, your choices with any chance of winning comes down to an either/or vote for one candidate or another.

Ranked choice is 'the hot reform' in democracy. Here's what you should know about it

by Miles Parks 13/12/23 npr

"Ranked choice voting is the hot reform," said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota. "It's being driven by deep, almost existential panic about the demise of American democracy. People are looking around what's going to respond to this. And ranked choice voting is the 'it' reform at this moment."

Ranked-Choice Voting Delivers Democrats A House Seat

by Steve Mistler ,Domenico Montanaro 15/11/18 npr

A House Republican who represents the northern part of Maine became the latest incumbent to be unseated as the Democrats' blue wave continues more than a week after Election Day.

Ranked choice voting is being touted as a cure-all for U.S. deep partisan divides

by All Things Considered 3/12/23 npr

This is news to no one, but a lot of Americans are worried about the state of democracy here. More than 8 in 10 Americans feel there's a serious threat to democracy in the U.S., according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll that was conducted after the midterms. And that anxiety has many people open to new ways of doing things, even voting.

Laboratories of Democracy: San Francisco voters rank their candidates. It’s made politics a little less nasty.

by Lee Drutman 31/7/19 Vox

Ranked choice voting could be the future of elections in America.

Get the scoop on ranked-choice voting

by Way Mullery, Ethan Cohen and Byron Manley 24/6/25 CNN politics

The ranked-choice voting process that New York City voters will use in the Democratic primary for mayor can be confusing, but the rules don’t have to give you brain freeze.

Can Ranked-Choice Voting Save American Democracy?

by Isaac Chotiner 10/1/20 THE NEW YORKER

In his new book, “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America,” the political scientist Lee Drutman explains the ways in which he thinks American democracy has atrophied or broken down, and what can be done to heal it. “Trump may not so much be the problem,” Drutman writes. “He is instead the symptom of something much bigger.” That something is our two-party structure, which Drutman believes has approached collapse.

If we’re abolishing the Electoral College, let’s also have ranked-choice voting for president

by Lee Drutman 21/3/19 Vox

It would maximize participation and broad-based appeal, and improve our democracy.

Ranked-choice voting isa already changing politics for the better

by Katrina Vanden Heuvel 4/5/21 The Washington Post

Some on the Right Flirt With a Voting Method the Left Loves

by Michael Wines 8/2/24 The New York Times

Long viewed as an intriguing, if somewhat wonky, approach to conducting elections, ranked-choice voting — allowing voters to list candidates in order of preference instead of selecting just one — appears to be having a moment.

'If You Can Keep It': The Realities Of Ranked Choice Voting

by npr 26/8/24

Both major political parties have now wrapped up their conventions. In one way, they're advertisements for why Americans should vote for each party's candidates, from president all the way down the ticket.

Missouri joins other red states in trying to stamp out ranked choice voting

by Jason Rosenbaum 5/6/24 npr

Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank candidates and ensures the winner gains majority support, as compared to the vast majority of elections, where someone can win with a plurality of votes.

The single transferable vote and ethnic conflict: The evidence from Northern Ireland

by Paul Mitchell 3/14 ScienceDirect

There has been a long-running debate amongst constitutional engineers between those who favour the proportional representation of parties (usually via PR-Closed List systems) and post-election power-sharing (Lijphart) and those who favour attempting to induce pre-election inter-ethnic ‘vote-pooling’ (Horowitz) as a more effective and stable method of governing divided societies.

Single transferable vote with Borda elimination: proportional representation, moderation, quasi-chaos and stability

by Chris Geller 6/05 ScienceDirect

Modifying single transferable vote (STV) by removing candidates according to their Borda scores creates a new vote counting system (STV-B) that is not quasi-chaotic, results in proportional representation, and promotes the election of moderate candidates. Dummett, M.A.E. [1997. Principles of Electoral Reform. Oxford University, New York] noted quasi-chaos in STV and proposed the “Quota/Borda system” (QBS) as a solution.

Making wasted votes count: Turnout, transfers, and preferential voting in practice

by James W. Endersby 3/14 ScienceDirect

Proponents of electoral reform champion the single transferable vote (STV) or aligned forms of preferential voting (AV, IRV, RCV) as a method to improve participation among and representation of the general public. Voters provide an ordinal ranking among alternatives on the ballot, and ballots not used to elect a candidate are transferred to another favored alternative.

Confused or competent? How voters use the STV ballot paper

by John Curtice 6/14 ScienceDirect

STV is often extolled because it allows voters to express a nuanced choice, but is criticised for being too confusing. In practice the system is little used, but evidence from where it is indicates much depends on how voters choose to use it. STV was used for the first time in Scottish local elections in 2007, providing valuable new evidence on how voters respond to the system.

Electoral Reform and Party Adaptation: The Introduction of the Single Transferable Vote in Scotland

by ALISTAIR CLARK, LYNN BENNIE 22/5/08 WILEY

The 2007 Scottish Local Government Elections saw the first large scale use of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in a mainland election in Britain. This presented a range of challenges for Scotland's political parties, more familiar with campaigning under first-past-the-post or the Scottish parliament's semi-proportional Additional Member System (AMS). Most crucially, STV meant the parties had to come to terms with multi-member wards and the transferral of votes between parties. Following a short discussion of the results of the STV elections, this article assesses evidence on how the parties adapted to the new electoral system, focussing particularly on candidate and campaign strategies.

Japan's new electoral system:: la plus ça change

by Margaret McKean 12/2000 ScienceDirect

We examine the impact on parties and candidates of Japan's new electoral rules, first used in the 1996 House of Representatives election. We argue that the Japanese rules, which not only permit dual candidacy but also allow votes cast in the single member district (SMD) portion of the race to allocate proportional representation (PR) seats to dual candidates, effectively defeat the purposes of electoral reform.

A characterization of proportionally representative committees

by Haris Aziz 5/22 ScienceDirect

In multiwinner elections, a central concern is proportional representation of voters. Around the world, prominent electoral reform movements advocate for electoral systems that guarantee proportional representation. For example, the Electoral Reform Society in the United Kingdom has the goal of having “public authorities in the UK elected by proportional representation,”1 and the FairVote organization in the United States is “committed to finding practical ways to advance […] American forms of proportional representation.

Voting for a coalition government: A game-theoretic view

by Stefano Vannucci 9/1977 ScienceDirect

I investigate direct electoral choice of the governing coalition in a multiparty parliamentary system and analyse some double-ballot electoral systems for inducing winning coalitional agreements among parties before the last round. The effectiveness of such electoral systems is shown to depend heavily on both the actual vote allocation and rules for the allotment of power among the parties of the governing coalition. Some alternative single-ballot coalition-selecting procedures based upon proportional representation are also described and discussed.

Who ought to be elected and who is actually elected? An empirical investigation of 92 elections under three procedures

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0261379494000196 by Dan S Felsenthal, Moshé Machover 6/1995 ScienceDirect]

Three voting procedures—Borda's Count (BR), Plurality Voting (PV), and the Single Transferable Vote (STV)—are compared with one another in relation to the outcomes of 92 real elections conducted in Britain by various trade unions, professional associations, and non-profit organizations.

Incumbency advantage in a proportional electoral system: A regression discontinuity analysis of Irish elections

by Paul Redmond 6/15 ScienceDirect

The existence of a large incumbency advantage in the winner-takes-all plurality system of the United States is well documented. It is unclear whether incumbents in proportional systems should enjoy such a large advantage.

Learn About Ranked Choice Voting

by SIERRA CLUB 16/10/24

With Proposition 1 on the ballot this fall, you've probably been hearing a lot about "Ranked Choice Voting" lately.

Sierra Club Endorses DC Ballot Measure for Ranked Choice Voting

by Mark Rodeffer 30/9/24 SIERRA CLUB

The Sierra Club endorses Initiative 83 to improve DC’s local democracy with ranked choice voting, which requires that candidates earn a majority of votes to be elected. Under ranked choice voting, voters cast a ballot for their top candidate and rank other candidates. If a voter’s top candidate does not win, their vote moves to their next choice, with the process continuing until a candidate wins more than 50% of votes.

Instant Runoff Voting: Rethinking Oregon’s Voting System

by Elizabeth Wilson 3/10/18 SIERRA CLUB

As a voter, I am constantly torn between wanting to support the candidates who I find the most inspiring and feeling like I will be wasting my vote if I do. The United States is a two-party system, and we as voters have been held hostage by both the GOP and the democratic party. We are forced to vote for the candidate we think has a chance at winning, the lesser of two evils. It forces us to vote our fears, not our hopes.

Social Choice Theory and Voting Mechanisms

by nature

Social choice theory provides a foundational framework for analysing collective decision‐making, where diverse individual preferences are aggregated into a single, socially endorsed outcome. This field investigates the theoretical underpinnings of voting mechanisms, which range from simple plurality systems to more sophisticated, strategy‐proof procedures designed to elicit and merge ordinal preferences. Voting mechanisms are not only essential for ensuring fair representation in political elections, but also find applications in distributed systems, resource allocation, and various multiagent scenarios. Recent studies have increasingly focused on the balance between fairness, efficiency and strategic incentives, striving to achieve outcomes that minimise social cost while preserving individual rationality.