Ranked choice voting

“Most voting methods used in the United States—imagine there’s five candidates running. When you go to the ballot box, you can select only one candidate. Whichever candidate gets a plurality or majority of the vote, they end up being the winner. Ranked choice voting, however, if you have five candidates, you can rank those five in order of preference, most to least preferred. Then if no candidate gets a majority of the vote in the first round, the least popular candidate is removed. Everybody who voted for the least popular candidate then has their vote transfer to the second candidate. This continues until one candidate gets a majority of the vote.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Joseph Coll, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of political science, Texas Tech University Grab This Quote

“Ranked choice voting is different from other methods in that instead of just ticking a box for the candidate you want to support, you have options to rank multiple candidates, 1-2-3-4-5, and—so as far as the voting act, that’s the only real difference. The counting act is different in that if your most preferred candidate doesn’t win or is not in the top two after a first round of counting, those ballots are looked at again, and your second preference then gets reassigned to somebody who might still be in the counting. So at the end of the counting, or these potential rounds of counting, you get a candidate who has 50% of the remaining votes.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Todd Donovan, Ph.D.
Professor of political science, Western Washington University Grab This Quote

“Proponents cite a number of benefits of ranked choice voting. First off, being that you don’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils. You can now rank candidates in order of preference instead of just voting for whoever you think has the most likely chance of winning. Second, unlike plurality elections, ranked choice voting elections require a majority for a winner. And unlike majority elections, where—imagine you have a majority election, where no candidate gets a majority. Then you’d have to have a runoff election at a later date, and that costs more money. Ranked choice voting elections allow for an instant runoff, such that your vote is instantly tallied towards your second favorite candidate. There’s also a argument that it might increase the diversity of candidates, including candidates of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as different genders. So the argument is it also—might also increase campaign stability. If you and I are both running in a ranked choice voting election, I can’t insult you, or else your voters aren’t going to rank me second. So I have to be nice to you. And last, some argue it may increase voter turnout as people are engaged by the new system.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Joseph Coll, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of political science, Texas Tech University Grab This Quote

“Yeah, there’s at least three. One is that campaigns might be more civil because candidates, rather than just you win or lose, you’re going to appeal to the supporters of other candidates to maybe rank you second, maybe rank you third, so you don’t want to go negative as much. A second thing is that there might be more active campaigning because candidates are going to emerge who maybe didn’t think they could win in the other system, and you might get higher turnout as a result of that. Then the third thing would be—and this research is not as clear—but that there may either be less polarization because this is a system that some people think would reward candidates that are more in the political center.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Todd Donovan, Ph.D.
Professor of political science, Western Washington University Grab This Quote

“Critics have a couple of criticisms of ranked choice voting, one of them being: When you have five candidates running, but you only have to select one, you only have to learn about one candidate—find out who your favorite is. But now, if you have to rank five candidates, you have to learn more about those five candidates. Additionally, the ballots themselves can be kind of confusing, and people can accidentally mess up their ballot. If you actually rank two people as first or two seconds, or whatever it is, your entire ballot can be voided. Similarly, because of this confusion, people might have difficulty filling it out, understanding how the ranked choice voting process works. There’s also thing called ballot exhaustion, which happens where, say, there’s 10 candidates, but you can only rank five. If you rank all five, and all five of those are eliminated, your ballot has been exhausted, but the election might still be going on, which make it so now your vote actually isn’t mattering for the final count—which leads to the biggest criticism that you can actually have it to where in the final round of a ranked choice voting election, it’s possible where the person gets a majority of the vote of that round, but not a majority of the votes cast in that election because of ballot exhaustion.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Joseph Coll, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of political science, Texas Tech University Grab This Quote

“There is at least three. One is it’s not as simple for voters to just click one box and vote for a candidate. You have to rank 1-2-3, which increases potentially the errors that voters can make, and their ballot might be spoiled. Second, it’s for some jurisdictions, you’re going to have to maybe buy new voting equipment or software to actually do the counting. And then third if you’re a voter who doesn’t rank at least two or three or four candidates, your ballot might not still be in the hunt when they’re doing this second round of counting and the third round of counting, which means the eventual outcome might not really be a majority winner if enough people didn’t use the ranking function.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Todd Donovan, Ph.D.
Professor of political science, Western Washington University Grab This Quote

“Those who support ranked choice voting do argue that it’ll increase the number of candidates from different backgrounds entering into the election. But as of now, the evidence today doesn’t really support that conclusion. But more work needs to be done.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Joseph Coll, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of political science, Texas Tech University Grab This Quote

“I’m not sure. In Australia, the way it’s used in their House of Representatives for the national Parliament, it does give an advantage to candidates who aren’t going to win and candidates of smaller parties. Because they can show, while I didn’t get elected, my supporters voted for me, and then all of their preferences transferred over and put this winner over the top. So it gives them some leverage they might not have in a regular winner-take-all single vote contest.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Todd Donovan, Ph.D.
Professor of political science, Western Washington University Grab This Quote

“Voters should consider whether or not ranked choice voting will work for their area, depending on things like: Is your election partisan or nonpartisan? Are they willing to put up with the cost to switch to rank choice voting, because there’s some complications there.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Joseph Coll, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of political science, Texas Tech University Grab This Quote

“And what is it you want to try to fix by changing the voting system? If you believe that this is going to change the way campaigns are running or maybe give some voices some traction in the political system where they’re not getting heard, then ranked choice voting might be appealing if you’re concerned about—changing the status quo always has some risks. How it might be implemented? Is there voter education efforts? Are they going to be effective? I mean, weighing those things when you’re deciding how to vote on these.” (Posted October 17, 2024 | Download Video)

Todd Donovan, Ph.D.
Professor of political science, Western Washington University Grab This Quote