1
Rank candidates
Mark your first choice, then your second choice, and so on. Rank only the candidates you support.
1 → 2 → 3
Why should your ballot force your opinion into a single box? Ranked Choice Voting lets voters rank candidates in the order they prefer.
If no candidate wins initially, your ballot can move to your next remaining choice. The count continues until a candidate reaches the winning threshold.
The exact rules vary by jurisdiction, but the basic idea is easy to understand.
Mark your first choice, then your second choice, and so on. Rank only the candidates you support.
First-choice votes are counted. If a candidate reaches the jurisdiction’s winning threshold, that candidate wins.
If nobody has won, the lowest candidate is eliminated. Those ballots transfer to each voter’s next remaining ranked choice when one exists.
If no ranked choice remains, that ballot stops transferring and becomes exhausted.
Rounds continue until a candidate reaches the winning threshold under the jurisdiction’s rules.
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Participation matters
Voting does more than pick a winner. It tells government what people want, what they will accept, and what they reject.
When tens of millions of adults do not participate, their preferences never enter the election result.
80M+
The exact election-year figure and denominator belong in the data pass. The structural problem does not depend on whether the final number is 80, 82, or 90 million.
Voting ≠ endorsement
Required participation does not have to mean a required vote for a candidate.
A voter can have a voice even when that voice says:
1 — Candidate A
2 — Candidate C
3 — Candidate B
○ None of these candidates
○ I decline to select a candidate
If society can require jury duty, it is reasonable to ask whether participation in choosing the government deserves even broader civic expectation.
Project position: RankedVoting.us supports dramatically broader participation while preserving the right to reject every available candidate.
The baseline
No party, candidate, movement, or ideology should get to decide that elections count only when it wins.
Accepting lawful election outcomes is not Republican, Democratic, Independent, conservative, liberal, or progressive. It is a requirement for the system itself to keep working.
The answer is not to care less about elections. It is to make participation, representation, transparency, and public trust stronger.
Be precise
Ranked voting captures more preference information than a choose-one ballot. It does not solve every problem in democracy.
Follow the incentive
Changing how votes are counted can change who can win.
CHOOSE ONE
A candidate can sometimes win with a strong plurality even when most voters preferred someone else.
If that strategy already keeps someone in office, changing the rules creates uncertainty.
RANKED CHOICE
A candidate may need first-choice support plus enough later-choice support from voters who preferred somebody else.
That can make a narrow political base less comfortable and broader voter acceptance more important.
That does not prove every politician who opposes RCV is protecting a seat. There are real arguments against RCV, and this site presents them too.
But political self-interest is also a legitimate question.
RCV does not guarantee an incumbent will lose. It can change the competition that incumbent has to survive.
No strawmen
If an argument cannot survive seeing the evidence against it, it is not a strong argument.
Data pass: Each claim and criticism will receive supporting research, contrary research, and source links.
1776 → 2026 → next
American democracy has changed again and again. Who could vote changed. How senators were elected changed. Voting protections changed. The voting system itself can be examined too.
Dates and historical claims will be linked to constitutional, statutory, archival, and scholarly sources in the data pass.
Not new to America
American cities experimented with proportional ranked voting long before modern election software existed.
The historical question is not whether Americans can use ranked ballots. They already have.
100+
Specific cities, dates, systems, repeals, and surviving implementations will be documented in the sourced history section.
RCV today
States, cities, counties, and other jurisdictions already use ranked ballots in real public elections.
LIVE
Real elections use ranked ballots now.
U.S.
Used in American jurisdictions, not just abroad.
DATA
Exact current counts belong in a maintained data source, not hard-coded forever.
Common questions
RCV rules are not identical everywhere. This section is intentionally educational; jurisdiction-specific claims should be verified against the applicable election authority.
In common instant-runoff RCV systems, a later choice is considered only when the candidates ranked above it are no longer continuing in the count. Exact counting rules should always be checked for the jurisdiction.
Usually voters may rank as many or as few candidates as the ballot instructions permit. You should never rank a candidate simply because a ranking line exists.
No. “Ranked Choice Voting” describes a family of ranked-ballot methods. Rules can differ for single-winner elections, multi-winner elections, thresholds, skipped rankings, and other ballot conditions.
The voting method itself does not belong to a political party. Support and opposition vary by place and by political context, which is why the mechanics and local rules should be evaluated separately from party identity.
Every important factual claim should lead to the evidence behind it.
Show where the number, rule, date, or historical claim came from.
Show evidence supporting the argument and meaningful evidence against it.
When RankedVoting.us takes a position, label it as a position instead of disguising it as a fact.
Sources & research
The next data pass will connect factual claims directly to their sources and build a maintainable research library.
Rule: A source should be cited for what it actually proves. A law proves what the law says. A dataset proves the values it reports. An advocacy group proves what that group argues. None automatically becomes the single authority for every claim.
The next step is understanding
Explore the rules used in your state or city, compare election methods, and decide from the mechanics rather than the slogan.