Rank Your Choice!

            In the November 2024 election, residents of Washington DC voted to adopt Initiative 83, which switches the District to use ranked choice voting for its elections. Ranked choice voting has many advantages over the traditional First Past the Post (FPTP) system, but it does represent a significant change to how voting is handled, and more importantly, how a voter casts their vote. And with the June 2026 primary just around the corner, understanding how it works is critical to making your voice heard.

            While there are numerous political parties that operate in the United States, the reality is that elections here are dominated by the Democratic and Republican parties. And with existing FPTP voting systems, voters are frequently forced to choose between “the lesser of two evils” rather than picking who they most align with, since voting for a third party may draw support away from a major party candidate that has a platform with some points of similarity.

In this scenario, we have three candidates: A, B and C. Candidate A and Candidate B are members of major political parties, while Candidate C is from a third party. Candidate B and Candidate C have similar platforms and as a result will draw support from the same pool of voters. Because it is a close race and some voters who may have supported B voted for C, Candidate A then has the most votes and wins the election. The realistic outcome of this system is that support gets locked into the two major parties to prevent 'the wrong candidate' from winning and third parties that may better represent the needs of constituents find it more difficult to gain traction in elections.

             Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in DC helps reduce the impact of this by allowing voters to select up to five candidates on their ballot, ranked in order of preference, and then performing multiple rounds of vote counting. This may sound complicated initially, but the process has pretty straightforward rules. The basic process is that voters will rank their choices in order of preference, from 1 to up to 5, with the top ranked candidate receiving that voter’s vote for that round. The votes are then counted, and if no candidate receives more than half of the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes gets eliminated from subsequent rounds of counting. The ballots are then counted again, but this time, voters that selected the candidate that was just eliminated as their top choice now have their vote counted towards their second choice. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of the votes.

Here we have the same candidates as the scenario above, but in this case with multiple rounds of vote counting. In the first round no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes so it goes to a second round of counting without Candidate C since he received the fewest votes. Voters who may prefer Candidate C can safely vote for him without having to worry that not voting for the more mainstream candidate will lead someone who doesn't share their values being elected.

In the upcoming June 16th Democratic primary, voters will be selecting the Democratic candidate for mayor and the non-voting Representative in the House of Representatives as well as a number of other local positions. The DC Board of Elections has a number of resources available to residents ranging from a sample image of what the ballot will look like, to webinars with information on how ranked choice voting works. You can also check your voter registration or register to vote if you haven’t already.

Important Things to Remember:

• Voters can vote for 5 or fewer candidates.
• Do not assign the same rank to more than one candidate, otherwise your ballot will be marked as inactive and will not be counted.
• Make sure you rank each desired candidate, without skipping any ranks. Doing this will also result in your ballot not being counted.
• If there is a candidate that you don’t want to vote for, don’t include them on your ballot.
• When in doubt, consult the official instructions provided on your ballot, or ask one of the many friendly volunteer ballot workers at your local polling place.