A ranked-choice ballot Is ranked-choice voting the best method of voting? (more) Ranked-Choice Voting Is Ranked-Choice Voting the Best Method of Voting? (Quick Take) Ask the Chatbot a Question More Actions Print print Print Please select which sections you would like to print: Table Of Contents Cite verifiedCite While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Select Citation Style MLA APA Chicago Manual of Style Copy Citation Share Share Share to social media Facebook X URL https://www.britannica.com/procon/ranked-choice-voting-debate Feedback Feedback Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Feedback Type Select a type (Required) Factual Correction Spelling/Grammar Correction Link Correction Additional Information Other Your Feedback Submit Feedback Thank you for your feedback Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

　　External Websites Ask the Chatbot a Question Written and fact-checked by Written and fact-checked by The Editors of ProCon ProCon's editors write and verify new content and update existing content. ProCon presents the pro and con arguments to debatable issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan, freely accessible way. The Editors of ProCon Last updated Oct. 14, 2025 •History Table of Contents Table of Contents Ask the Chatbot Ranked-choice voting (RCV), a form of proportional voting (in contrast to a winner-take-all election), was invented in Europe in the 1850s and used in a smattering of places—Denmark, Ireland, Malta, and Australia—throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ashtabula, Ohio, was the first place to use RCV in the United States, for a 1915 city council election, after which the method spread to 52 jurisdictions across 23 states and Washington, D.C., as of October 2025. Alaska and Maine use RCV for statewide and federal elections. [1][15]

　　Zohran MamdaniDemocratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party's nominee for the mayor of New York, April 2025.(more)Although the method has never gained widespread traction in the United States, RCV gained attention in 2025, when it was used in the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, won by democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. The city has used RCV for most city elections since 2021. [11]

　　RCV is a method of voting in which voters rank all possible candidates on a ballot, and a candidate cannot win the election until the candidate wins a majority (more than 50 percent) of the votes. For example, if there are four candidates, a voter ranks them one through four on a ballot in order of preference. If a candidate wins the majority of first-preference votes (the candidate is marked number 1 on the ballot), then that candidate wins the election. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, then (1) the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated from the election and (2) voters who ranked the eliminated candidate as their first choice have their votes reassigned to their next-highest-ranked candidate. This process of vote reassignment is repeated until a candidate wins a majority of the votes. [2]

　　How Does Ranked-Choice Voting Work?Voters rank candidates in order of preference.(more)If that sounds confusing, let’s talk ice cream.

　　Ranked-Choice voting explainedHow does ranked-choice voting work?(more)The method is also called alternative voting (AV), ranked voting, and instant runoff. In other words, instead of having to hold a full runoff election on another date between the top two candidates who did not win a majority in the primary, as many cities and states mandate, RCV allows for an “instant runoff” by reassigning the existing votes in ranked order. Although RCV is used infrequently in the United States, should it be used more often, even at the national level? Explore the debate below. [2]

　　What follows is a ProCon Quick Take debate, an abbreviated form of our longer features. ProCon will likely expand on this debate in the future.

　　Pros and Cons at a Glance

　　As Eveline Dowling and Caroline Tolbert wrote for the American Bar Association:

　　Candidates who had hesitated to enter a race for fear of being a spoiler may be more willing to enter an RCV [ranked-choice voting] race.…In plurality [voting], voters of a particular ideological persuasion may stick with a disliked candidate because if only some of them shift to a replacement on their side, they could end up allowing the other side’s candidate to win. In RCV (where vote-splitting is less of a concern) they are freer to shift to a better alternative. [4]

　　Ranked-choice voting can even encourage more candidates to run, especially minorities, offering the public a more diverse pool of candidates. “RCV makes it easier for women and candidates of color to run for office and win,” reports Fair Vote. “With RCV, candidates aren’t pressured to wait their turn, nor are they perceived as ‘spoilers.’ Research finds that candidates of color are more likely to win RCV elections, particularly in races featuring multiple candidates of color.” [3]

　　Pro 3: Ranked-choice voting decreases negative campaigning, encourages candidates to campaign beyond their base, and increases voter turnout. In a ranked-choice election, if a candidate runs a negative campaign about an opponent, the candidate risks alienating voters who favor the opponent and thus losing a second- or third-ranked vote. [5]

　　Furthermore, candidates are more likely to engage in voter outreach, beyond their traditional base of support, in order to obtain a majority in a second-ranked vote, and this additional engagement increases voter turnout. Rebecca Noecker, a member of the City Council in Saint Paul, Minnesota, explained that while running for office, she “door knocked a number of people who had signs up for [her] opponent.…The conversation didn’t have to stop because they had already pledged to someone else.” A candidate may not have won that voter on the first round of voting but could still win that vote in the second or third round of voting. [4]

　　RCV forces candidates to abandon negative campaign tactics because candidates not only need the first choice support of their supporters, but also the second and third choice support from voters who prefer other candidates. A study has shown that jurisdictions with RCV have experienced friendlier campaigns and majority support in the cities using it. [12]

　　Voter engagement and political dialogue are multiplied in ranked-choice voting, and that’s good for democracy.

　　Con 2: Ranked-choice voting disenfranchises voters, limiting their choices and “exhausting” their ballots. Although voters are able, and perhaps encouraged, to rank all candidates on their ballots, they do not always do so. Some voters may only support one or two candidates and find ranking candidates with whom they disagree strongly distasteful or even immoral. [13]

　　When the candidates on a voter’s ballot have been eliminated by the ranked-choice process, that ballot is “exhausted,” and that voter is effectively disenfranchised. [7]

　　A study of more than 600,000 ballots from four local elections found that the rate of ballot exhaustion ranged from 9.6 percent to 27.1 percent. This amounted to, according to the authors of the study, “a substantial number of votes being discarded in each election.” [7]

　　Any voting system that tosses out votes and voters, or that reassigns a voter’s vote to a candidate the voter objects to for the creation of a fake majority, is wholly undemocratic.

　　Con 3: Ranked-choice voting complicates voting, delays results, and is more vulnerable to corruption. In 2016 California Gov. Jerry Brown, Jr., vetoed a bill to expand ranked-choice voting in his state, calling it “overly complicated and confusing”; it “deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.” The conservative Heritage Foundation agreed with the Democratic governor, comparing ranked voting to a shifty supermarket:

　　Imagine if…at checkout the cashier swaps out your bottle of Heinz 57 with the cheap generic you ranked dead last. Why? Well, the majority of shoppers also down-voted it, but there was no clear front-runner, so the generic snuck up from behind with enough down ballot picks to win. In fact, in this ranked choice supermarket, you might even have helped the lousy generic brand win. [13]

　　Moreover, ranked voting delays results. If no candidate wins a majority, the subsequent rounds of tabulation have to wait until all valid ballots have been counted. In Alaska, which uses ranked-choice voting for all elections, the second and later rounds of counting cannot even begin until 15 days after the election because the state continues to count absentee ballots. [8][9][10]

　　Finally, whenever additional rounds of tabulation are added to an election, the risk of election fraud is compounded, especially if the election is a national one. “Under a national popular vote, RCV faces enormous technical hurdles,” writes the Center for Election Science. “The nature of RCV tabulation requires that all the ballot data be centralized for tabulation. This creates both security and logistical concerns.…You’d [also] have to deal with holdout states still using our choose-one [candidate] method.…But you can’t add RCV and regular choose-one ballots together. It just doesn’t work.” [6]

　　Discussion Questions Should ranked-choice voting be used in elections? If yes, consider which elections (local? national?) and explain. If no, why not?If you were running for office and the election were ranked choice, how would that influence your campaign? Explain your answer.Experiment with your own ranked-choice election, perhaps with ice cream as demonstrated in the video and infographic above, for a book club selection, or even for which meal is chosen for a family dinner. Were you happy with the result? Did the result differ from a single, simple majority vote? Do you think the result reflected a true majority opinion, or do you think the ranked-choice method “manufactured” a majority instead? SourcesRanked Choice Voting Resource Center, “History of RCV” (accessed September 18, 2025), rcvresources.orgEncyclopædia Britannica, “Ranked Voting” (June 23, 2025), britannica.comFair Vote, “Ranked Choice Voting” (accessed September 24, 2025), fairvote.orgEveline Dowling and Caroline Tolbert, “What We Know About Ranked Choice Voting, Updated for 2025” (March 6, 2025), americanbar.orgA.J. Simmons, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Ranked-Choice Voting (and Maybe Somethings You Didn’t)” (April 12, 2023), uis.eduAaron Hamlin, “The Limits of Ranked-Choice Voting” (accessed September 18, 2025), electionscience.orgCraig M. Burnett and Vladimir Kogan, “Ballot (and Voter) ‘Exhaustion’ Under Instant Runoff Voting: An Examination of Four Ranked-Choice Elections” (March 2015), Electoral Studies, sciencedirect.comAlaska Division of Elections, “Alaska’s Ballot Counting System and Schedule” (accessed September 18, 2025), elections.alaska.govIowans for Tax Relief Foundation, “Beyond the Ballot: The Flawed Reality of Ranked Choice Voting” (February 14, 2024), itrfoundation.orgDylan Ebs, “How Ranked Choice Voting Works: A Guide Ahead of New York City’s Primary” (June 19, 2025), nbcnews.comRank the Vote NYC (accessed September 18, 2025), rankthevotenyc.orgCampaign Legal Center, “Ranked Choice Voting” (accessed September 24, 2025), campaignlegal.orgHans von Spakovsky and J. Adams, “Ranked Choice Voting Is a Bad Choice” (August 23, 2019), heritage.orgAndrew Eggers and Laurent Bouton, “Democracy Reform Primer Series: Ranked-Choice Voting” (April 30, 2024), effectivegov.uchicago.eduFair Vote, “Where Is RCV Used in Public Elections?” (accessed October 1, 2025), fairvote.org