Does Ranked Choice Voting Work? A Clear-Eyed Look at the Evidence

Does ranked choice voting work? In the places that have actually used it — Maine and Alaska statewide, plus dozens of cities and counties — it does what it was designed to do: voters rank candidates, the count proceeds in rounds, and the winner finishes with majority support among the ballots still in play. What it does not do is cure polarization, guarantee better candidates, or end the fights that made people want reform in the first place. The gap between that promise and that evidence is where the honest argument lives, and it is worth having.

What is ranked choice voting, in plain English?

You rank the candidates in order of preference instead of picking one. If a candidate wins an outright majority of first choices, the race is over. If nobody does, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots move to their voters’ next choice. The rounds repeat until someone crosses fifty percent of the ballots still counting.

That is the whole mechanism. It has a less marketable name — instant-runoff voting — and a long track record: Australia has elected its House this way since 1918.

Does ranked choice voting work where it is actually used?

Mechanically, yes. Maine has used it in federal elections since 2018. Alaska has paired it with a top-four primary since 2022. New York City uses it in municipal primaries, and roughly fifty American jurisdictions use it in some form. Those elections have been counted, audited, recounted, and certified. The ballots get tabulated and the results hold up. Anyone telling you the machinery cannot function is arguing against something that has already happened.

The softer claims deserve more skepticism. Surveys in ranked choice cities consistently find that large majorities of voters say the ballot was easy to use — that one holds up well. But the claim that ranking candidates reliably produces friendlier campaigns is mixed in the research: some studies find more positive tone, others find no measurable effect. The turnout story is weaker still. Election scientists have not found that ranked choice voting meaningfully raises participation on its own.

A reform that only survives on inflated promises is a reform waiting to be repealed.

What are the strongest objections worth answering?

Three of them are serious.

The first is ballot exhaustion. If you rank only two candidates and both are eliminated, your ballot stops counting before the final round. The winner’s “majority” is then a majority of the ballots still active, not of every ballot cast. Supporters note that this is also true of traditional runoffs, where turnout often collapses between rounds. Both things are true, and voters deserve to hear both.

The second is speed and administration. Rounds require ballots to be processed centrally, which can slow results in close races — and in an era where delay gets treated as evidence of fraud, slowness is a political cost, not just a logistical one.

The third is the complexity burden. A ballot that rewards research asks more of the voter with the least time and the least information. Clear instructions and real civic education are not optional add-ons here; they are part of the reform.

And then there is the politics. As of 2026, more than a dozen states have banned or preempted ranked choice voting, while Alaskans — who rejected a repeal in 2024 by the narrowest margin in their state’s history — will decide the question again. That pattern should tell you something useful: this has been adopted and rejected in red places and blue places alike. It is a governing-mechanics question that keeps getting recruited into team sports.

Why does a question about ballot design count as hope?

Because reform almost never arrives as a heroic act. It arrives as rules.

Rules decide who bothers to run. They decide whether a candidate must persuade people outside their base or merely out-mobilize them. They decide whether a third-place finisher is a spoiler or a serious contender. Change the counting and you change the incentives, and incentives are what actually move politicians — far more reliably than speeches about civility.

Here is the hopeful part, and I mean it literally: these decisions are still being made in public, by ordinary voters, in city council races and statewide ballot measures. The system is editable. A thing that can be adopted can be repealed, and a thing that can be repealed can be adopted again. That is not stalemate. That is a live argument, which is the only kind of politics where anything improves.

What can one voter actually do with this?

Start by finding out which rules govern your own ballot; most people do not know whether their city uses ranked choice voting, a runoff, or a plurality. Read the instructions before election day rather than in the booth. Rank as many candidates as you are willing to stand behind, because a partially ranked ballot is exactly how exhaustion happens. Show up for the low-turnout municipal elections where these changes are actually decided. And argue about the mechanics with people who disagree with you, on the evidence, without reaching for the nearest partisan shorthand.

This is the kind of unglamorous machinery I keep writing fiction about. The Bull Moose novels are built on the premise that procedure is where power really lives — that the rule nobody reads is the one that decides everything. If you want to see how that plays out with the stakes turned up, start with the free prequel, The Senate Deception, or pick up What It Takes to Kill a Bull Moose. The full reading order is here if you would rather take the series in sequence.

Ranked choice voting is not a cure. It is a tool, with real benefits and real costs, that some Americans have chosen and others have rejected. The reason to pay attention is not that it will save us. It is the proof that the rules are still ours to write.

Frequently asked questions

Does ranked choice voting work in real elections? Yes, mechanically. Maine has used it in federal elections since 2018, Alaska since 2022, and roughly fifty U.S. jurisdictions use it in some form. Those elections have been counted, audited and certified without systemic failure. The contested questions are about effects, not feasibility.

What is the biggest criticism of ranked choice voting? Ballot exhaustion. If a voter ranks only a few candidates and all of them are eliminated, that ballot stops counting before the final round, so the winner’s majority is a majority of active ballots rather than of all ballots cast. Ranking more candidates reduces the risk.

Is ranked choice voting a partisan reform? It has not behaved like one. Voters in both conservative and liberal places have adopted it, and voters and legislatures in both have rejected or banned it. As of 2026 more than a dozen states have banned or preempted it, while Alaska voters are again deciding whether to keep it.

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About the author: Michael Fedor is the award-winning author of the Bull Moose political thriller series. Drawing on 20 years inside politics and campaigns, he writes pulse-pounding fiction about power, democracy, and the fragile machinery of the republic.