Voters in four states and the District of Columbia will have a chance to adopt ranked choice voting through ballot measures on Tuesday, setting the stage for a potentially massive expansion of an alternative voting system in which voters rank candidates rather than only picking their top choice.
On Tuesday, voters in Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada and D.C. will choose whether to adopt the system. The dominant political parties in each location have fought against the adoption of ranked choice voting, which is already used in Alaska, Maine and a handful of municipalities around the country, including New York City and San Francisco.
In ranked choice, voters indicate who would be their first choice, second choice, third choice and so on down the ballot. If no one gets a majority of first-place votes, the votes are retabulated: The candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and the second-choice votes of that eliminated candidate are added to the remaining candidates’ tallies. This goes on until a candidate gets a majority of votes.