RCV on the Ballot in November 2024

An RCV sample ballot for the Portland Mayoral Race

Ranked-choice Voting on the Ballot this November: An Introduction

October 29, 2024

The November 2024 election in the United States is a big one for a family of vote casting and counting systems known as “Ranked-choice Voting” (RCV). RCV is on the statewide ballot in seven states (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Nevada, and Oregon) and Washington, D.C. Another four cities will vote on whether to adopt (Oak Park and Peoria in Illinois and Richmond in California) or repeal (Bloomington, Minnesota) RCV for their local elections. Additionally, at least twelve jurisdictions will once again vote using RCV, including two states (Alaska and Maine) and five California Bay Area cities, including San Francisco and Berkeley. Portland, Oregon, and Arlington, Virginia will use RCV for the first time this November.

With RCV on the ballot and in use in so many places this year, DODO is cutting through the noise with a series of evidence-based blogs on RCV. In this post, the first of three, DODO provides an overview of the different types of RCV, their basic characteristics, their use in the United States, and the variants of RCV on the ballot in November 2024. In later posts, we’ll take a deeper dive into the ballot measures to help inform citizens assess their merits.

What is RCV?

RCV is not just one way of voting. It is a family of voting and vote counting methods in which voters rank candidates in order of their preference and vote counting proceeds in rounds. There are numerous RCV variants. Each one has different uses and effects. The characteristics all variants share are that:

Voters rank candidates.
Vote counting proceeds in rounds.
The unique effects of the RCV variant are greater as more voters rank candidates more fully.

The most common variants of RCV in the United States are instant run-off voting (IRV), single transferable vote (STV), and preferential block vote (PBV). Although these variants are all “RCV,” (i.e., voters rank candidates and vote counting happens in rounds), they are quite different.

Basic characteristics of three RCV variants

Instant Run-off Voting (IRV)

IRV is a variant of RCV used to elect a single candidate.

- Threshold to win: To win, a candidate must receive a majority of votes.
- Vote counting: If a candidate wins a majority of first rankings, they win. If no candidate wins a majority of first rankings, a second round of vote counting – an “instant run-off” – commences. The candidate with the fewest first rankings is eliminated and ballots ranking that candidate as their top choice will have their next choice counted. Votes are tallied and the process continues until one candidate has more than half of the remaining vote.

Single Transferable Vote (STV)

STV is a proportional variant of RCV used to elect multiple candidates at once, such as in a city council election in which three council members are elected at the same time.

- Due to its heavy reliance on math, STV can be difficult to describe. DODO provides a fuller definition here.
- Threshold to win: In short, to win, a candidate must exceed a threshold percentage of votes, which is equal to 1/(the number of candidates to be elected + 1)%. Using the example above, a candidate in a contest for a three-member city council seat must receive more than 1/(3+1)%, or 25%, of votes cast to win a seat.
- Vote counting: In each round, the candidates who have exceeded the threshold are elected, additional ranking information from voters for the winning candidate is introduced, and the last placed candidates are eliminated until another candidate is elected. This process continues until all seats are filled.
- As with any proportional system, STV produces proportional results when there are many candidates to be elected (e.g., in five- or six-winner races).

Preferential Block Vote (PBV)

PBV is a non-proportional variant of RCV used to elect multiple candidates at once.

- Threshold to win: To win, a candidate must receive a majority of votes.
- Vote counting: When electing the first winner, voters’ first choices are tallied as they would be under IRV until a candidate is elected. To elect the second and subsequent winner, ballots are retallied using the IRV process as if the elected candidate(s) had not run for office, with each ballot counting for the highest ranked candidate that has not been elected. This process continues until the desired number of candidates have been elected.

All RCV variants use more information about voter preferences to elect candidates than more common voting methods like plurality. However, the three variants differ in which information they use to choose winners.

IRV is a “bottom up” method. As the least popular candidates are eliminated, information on their voters’ second (or lower) preferences are introduced (at full value), flowing 'upward' toward the more popular candidates.
PBV is a “top-down” method. Like IRV, PBV introduces information on the preferences of voters for the least popular candidates to help elect the most popular candidates. However, as each candidate is elected, the counting resets. The ballots of all voters are reintroduced – including those who cast a first choice for the elected candidate(s). Votes are counted as if the winning candidate(s) was never in the race, so these voters’ votes flow “downward” to contribute to the election of subsequent candidates.
STV goes both ways – introducing information on the preferences of voters for the most popular candidates (at a smaller, weighted value), then the least popular (at full value), then the next most popular (at a smaller, weighted value), then the next least popular (at full value), and so on.

The differences between the three RCV variants are summarized below in Table 1.

Table 1: RCV Variants compared

Use of RCV in the United States

According to FairVote, a leading advocate of RCV in the US, RCV is currently in use in 50 U.S. jurisdictions. DODO has confirmed that some variant of RCV is in use (or will be for November 2024) in Alaska and Maine (for state and federal offices), 26 cities, towns, and villages, and around 14 counties.

As Table 2 shows, when advocates talk about RCV in the United States, they are mostly referring to IRV. Alaska and Maine, 23 or 26 cities, towns, and villages, and two of the 14 counties that use RCV use IRV. Only three jurisdictions (Albany, California; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the village of Arden, Delaware) use STV. Twelve of the 14 counties that use RCV use PBV as part of a pilot program in Utah, which is set to end in 2025.

Table 2: Where are the RCV Variants used?

Use of RCV in the November 2024 Election

In November 2024, at least twelve jurisdictions will vote using RCV, with 11 of those jurisdictions using IRV and one employing STV. These are the uses DODO has confirmed:

Alaska and Maine will use IRV to elect state and federal offices.
Westbrook, Maine will use IRV for the first time to elect its mayor.
Five California Bay Area cities, including San Francisco and Berkeley, will use RCV to elect their offices. One of the five cities (Albany) will use STV; the remaining four will use only IRV.
- Eureka, CA, would have used IRV for the first time this November to elect its city council, however no more than two candidates were nominated for any of the seats up for election.
Portland, Oregon, will use IRV to elect city councilors for the first time, as will two wards in the City of Corvallis, Oregon.
Benton County, Oregon will use IRV to elect a county commissioner.
Arlington, Virginia, will use IRV for the first time (in a general election) to elect a county board member.

IRV Riding Shotgun with “Open Primaries” in 2024

Yard sign in Oak Park, IL

RCV is on the statewide ballot in seven states (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Nevada, and Oregon) and Washington, D.C. As you might expect from reading the discussion so far, most of the ballot measures involve IRV as part of “open primaries” proposals.

In five of the seven states (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada), IRV is the only form of RCV contemplated by the ballot measure. These states are all voting on introducing (or repealing, in Alaska) an “open” non-partisan non-partisan two-round election system.

In Oregon and Washington, D.C., voters will vote on both IRV and STV. Oregonians are voting on whether to adopt IRV for federal and statewide executive offices and authorize the use of STV locally (for cities and counties that opt in). D.C. residents are voting on whether to adopt RCV (IRV for all single-winner races and STV for all multi-winner races) for all contests (federal and local) with three or more candidates.
In Missouri, voters will decide whether to ban RCV in Missouri elections.
No state is voting on whether to adopt or repeal PBV.

The ballot measures are summarized in Table 3. In our next blog post, DODO will go over the ballot measures in more detail.

An open non-partisan non-partisan two-round election system (NTES), called “open primaries” by advocates, is a system of electing candidates that involves two rounds.

The first round is a “winnowing” preliminary election. All candidates are subject to the same nomination requirements, irrespective of the partisan affiliation. All candidates appear on the same ballot paper, irrespective of the partisan affiliation. Candidates choose which party designation they want to appear next to their names. All preliminary election voters receive the same ballot and can vote for any candidate on the ballot. A predetermined number of candidates with the most votes advance to the general election, irrespective of their partisan affiliation.
The second round is the general election, in which the candidates who advanced from the preliminary election appear on the ballot. Only candidates who advanced from the preliminary election may appear – there is no alternative process for qualifying for the ballot. Candidates choose which party designation they want to appear next to their names. If three or more candidates advance from the preliminary election, IRV or other non-plurality voting may be used.