Rank Choice Poll: What You Need to Know

New York City was the first city to adopt a voting system called Rank Choice Voting (RCV) (opens in new tab) in last June's preliminary election. While New York City is not the first city to adopt Ranked Choice Voting, the system has remained relatively inconspicuous as states gradually begin to adopt it across the country. Nevertheless, RCV's popularity continues to grow, and whether or not you live in New York, you will undoubtedly hear more and more about the system.

Below is everything you need to know about Ranked Choice Voting.

Ranked-choice voting allows voters to rank multiple candidates on the ballot in the order of their preference, instead of choosing a single candidate. (In New York City, voters may rank up to five candidates. If no candidate receives a majority of the votes, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated and a second tally is conducted. (The voter's first candidate is counted in the first round, but if the voter's first candidate does not win in the first round, the second candidate is counted, and so on.) The goal is to elect a candidate with majority support.

"The current system encourages people to vote strategically and think carefully about how to use their vote where it matters most. Do you vote for the candidate you like or do you vote for the candidate who is actually more likely to win?"

Deb Otis, senior research analyst for FairVote (opens in new tab), a nonpartisan organization advocating for electoral reform, told Marie Claire. 'The best strategy in Ranked Choice Voting is to express your honest preferences.'

RCV is in place in about 20 locations across the country, including Maine and cities such as San Francisco, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, and Oakland. Meanwhile, in 2021 alone, 29 states have introduced RCV legislation (open in new tab). Alaska began implementing RCV in all legislative and state elections this year and will adopt it in the 2024 presidential election. A full list of cities and states that have adopted or will adopt Rank Choice Voting can be found here (opens in new tab).

This varies completely from city to city and state to state. Cities that use rank-choice voting can have immediate results on election night, but with the current pandemic season and mail ballots being a popular alternative to in-person voting, it can take several days for mail ballots to be counted. In New York City, delays are expected as mail-in ballots wait to be counted until Election Day.

Aside from helping candidates and winners better connect with voters, RCV has been shown to increase representation of women and people of color: as of April 2020, according to a survey conducted by Represent Women (opens in new tab), 46% of mayors decided by RCV percent and 49 percent of all City Council seats are held by women. It also provides a more level playing field for those not considered "traditional candidates."

Overall, campaigning also tends to be more aggressive, as candidates compete for the second and third positions of voters and rank each other on the ballot. Organizations and politicians are also embracing the RCV system and endorsing multiple candidates (opens in new tab).

New systems require new educational initiatives. If cities and states do not invest in proper multilingual voting education initiatives, voters may be hesitant to participate in the electoral process if they do not know how it works. Additionally, those who are not politically active may find it burdensome to rank candidates with whom they are unfamiliar. As a result, voter turnout may decline. However, there is not yet sufficient evidence to prove this.

"From my perspective, the bigger concern is that a lot of people have this idea that ranked-choice voting allows people to vote for a third party and that the two-party system will collapse," says University of Oklahoma Institute for Human Prosperity postdoctoral Devin McCarthy, a research fellow at the University of Oklahoma's Institute for Human Prosperity, who has studied the rank-choice voting generation support gap, says (opens in new tab). He says, "I think most political scientists would agree that the likelihood of that happening with rank-choice voting alone is pretty low.

A closer look at McCarthy and co-author Jack Santucci's analysis of five rank-choice voting surveys (opens in new tab) reveals that younger voters are more likely to support rank-choice voting than older voters because of dissatisfaction with the two-party system in America. Thus, the need for voter education initiatives across all age groups to debunk myths and ensure trust in the process was reaffirmed.

Such education can also prevent situations where voters rank only one candidate. If that candidate is eliminated from the ballot early in the process, his or her ballot is exhausted and has no effect on the subsequent ranked-choice ballot process.

While this is true in NYC, it is not always the case. Cities and states can decide whether or not to include the name of a political party on the ballot, and whether or not to rank all options. The effectiveness of the system depends on the rules. For example, in Alaska's primary election, candidates from all parties are combined, and the four candidates who receive the most votes in the preliminary election advance to the general election. The winner of that election is then also determined by ranked-choice voting.

Advocates say yes. Currently, H.R. 1 (open in new tab), aka the For the People Act, has a ranked-choice voting provision to allow electoral equipment to have a ranked-choice voting function. The bill was passed by the House and will now be considered by a Senate committee.

For more information on rank-choice voting, click here (opens in new tab) and here (opens in new tab). For more information on the New York City primaries that implemented ranked-choice voting, click here (opens in new tab) and here (opens in new tab).

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