Maybe you've heard of ranked choice voting (RCV)—it's been passed in Alaska and Maine, and many cities and localities across the country use it, too—but you’re unsure what it’s about.
Or maybe you haven’t heard about it at all!
CLC has you covered.
We’ve put together a short video explaining ranked choice voting: what it is, how it works, and why it’s beneficial.
One of the benefits of RCV is that it saves time and money for jurisdictions by eliminating the need for costly runoff elections, like the one scheduled in Georgia for Jan. 5, 2021.
In the 2020 November general election, no candidates for U.S. Senate in Georgia won a majority of votes, forcing the contest into a runoff election. Georgia voters will have to go to the polls again and select a winner, two months after voters already voted for U.S. Senate candidates.
Runoff elections are not only costly but also less representative. Runoff elections tend to have low and unbalanced turnout resulting in the selection of candidates who may not actually reflect voter preferences.
RCV solves this problem by allowing voters to rank their candidate preferences at the ballot box, and it produces a winner that is acceptable to the majority of the voters (without the need for a runoff election), in accordance with their cast votes.
Watch our video below, and learn more about RCV by visiting our DemocracyU page.
RCV makes our democracy more equitable and gives voters more choice at the ballot box.
