Election 2025: Ranked Choice Voting points the way to a better national politics

RCV was used in 14 cities and counties and resulted in more voter choice and candidate coalition-building instead of “attack dog” politics

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While the national media was focused on the bitter battle between Donald Trump and the Democrats, playing out in elections in Virginia, New Jersey and California, a quieter positive story was percolating in a number of local hotspots.

Ranked choice voting (RCV) was used successfully in 14 cities and counties to elect mayors and city councils. That included Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington and St. Louis Park, all in Minnesota, Fort Collins, CO, Santa Fe, NM, and Cambridge, MA. The results really demonstrate the power of RCV as a voter-empowering reform that gives people more electoral choices and better campaigns. These elections, like so many previous RCV elections, also demonstrate the miracle of ranked ballots. If RCV was used in national elections for Congress, President, governors and more, that single change would dramatically improve US politics in ways that would provide relief for so many alienated and frustrated Americans.

FairVote has done a great job of tracking these elections and reporting on the outcomes. Within a day of the final cast votes, FairVote had already provided detailed and nuanced analysis that really lifts up the hood and lets us see the nitty-gritty of what happened in these elections, and what real reform looks like. Check this out, from FairVote’s report:

In St. Paul, Minnesota’s capital city, voters elected the city’s first woman and Hmong-American mayor, state representative Kaohly Her. Mayor-elect Her will be joined by an all female city council, which was also elected with RCV. As FairVote points out, “In RCV elections across the nation, including in Minnesota, more women and people of color have run for office and won.”

This election saw the highest turnout for a mayoral contest in St. Paul since at least 1999. Representative Her was one of four candidates challenging incumbent mayor Melvin Carter, the city’s first Black mayor. Unlike the brutal bash going on in the mayoral election in New York City, where the “choose one candidate and the highest vote-getter wins” format resulted in a “me against you” contest, Mayor Carter and Representative Her kept the tone of the campaign relatively positive as each candidate tried to court the second and third ranked choices from the supporters of other candidates. In fact, Carter and Her even campaigned together on Election Day in favor of a city ballot measure. That’s one of the miracles of ranked ballots – instead of “knock ‘em down” campaigns voters see more of a focus on issues and coalition-building.

The coalition-building was essential to Her’s victory. She narrowly trailed Carter in first-ranking support, but the supporters of other challengers preferred Her as their backup selection allowing her to pull off an impressive “come-from-behind” victory. But the real winners were the voters, who were not stuck picking between the “lesser of two evils” and were able to express the nuances of their preferences in a crowded field. 9,218 voters (14%) ranked as their first choice a different candidate than Carter or Her, yet did not waste their vote on a loser. They were able to register their backup choices in this “instant runoff,” as wellas expressing their preferences between the top two candidates Carter and Her. By the end of the instant runoff process, 93% of the 68,000 St. Paul voters had their vote count for one of the two finalists.

I found this result to be particularly uplifting for a few reasons. In nearly every place where RCV has been used, it has liberated minority voters and candidates to run and compete and experience success. Previously outcast communities have found inclusion and their piece of the American dream. Following her victory, Mayor-elect Her said:

“My family came here as refugees. Never in their wildest dreams would I be standing here today accepting the position of mayor, mayor of the city that gave them the opportunity to live the American dream. I am doing this work for them, for you and for the future of this great city.”

But that’s not all. Her came from behind and beat an incumbent mayor, and often such an upset results in bitterness and backbiting. But following his loss Mayor Carter, who was originally elected in a previous RCV election, said:

“[Mayor-elect Her] is going to be the next mayor of this city, and I told her that me and my team will be there to set her up for success. Because this has never been about me and this has never been about my team. This has to be about the city, and that means we have to set her up for success.”

Can you imagine Donald Trump, or even many Democratic leaders like Andrew Cuomo, responding to their electoral loss with such graciousness and selflessness? RCV attracts a different type of candidate and elects a different type of winner. If we used RCV on the national level, I have no doubt that it would result in a dramatic improvement in partisan politics.

Similar stories in other RCV cities

Fort Collins, Colorado used RCV in its local elections for the first time on Tuesday. In a field of seven candidates for mayor, city councilor Emily Francis won the city’s RCV election with 53% of the vote over her fellow city councilor Tricia Canonico. Thousands of voters ranked as their first choice a candidate besides either Francis or Canonico. Yet instead of wasting their vote on a losing candidate, these voters’ ballots counted for their next-ranked candidate. Nearly 8000 voters (approximately 21%) ranked one of the two finalists and had their vote contribute to the outcome. That means more Fort Collins voters had a say in which candidate became their next mayor.

Interestingly, both of the front running candidates, Francis and Canonico, praised RCV during the campaign. Francis said that“Ranked choice voting is such a great opportunity for Fort Collins. It gets more people involved in running for office… you have more choice. More people are out there talking to community members, getting more people interested.” Canonico shared that “We have so many great candidates… It’s really enlightening for people to recognize this isn’t so binary as it is in a regular election and they have more choices… I think RCV is really going to help us keep [rancor] out of our local politics…It’s really the collaborative candidates that win elections.”

Once again, candidates praising each other, differentiating themselves from the pack of candidates through their positions on the issues and their personal qualities instead of by viciously attacking their opponents. This is the type of change that national US politics desperately needs.

In St. Louis Park, MN, voters effectively used their rankings in the one (out of four) city council race that needed an “instant runoff” to decide the outcome. The three frontrunning candidates had 43%, 31% and 25.4% respectively. A full 93% of ballots continued into the final round as voters used their lower rankings for the two finalists. The lead candidate Daniel Bashore ultimately claimed victory with a decisive 62% of the popular vote.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota’s largest city, a record-breaking turnout picked its mayor from a 16 candidate field. Incumbent mayor Jacob Frey, whose term became controversial due to his handling of the George Floyd protests and its aftermath, led in the first round with 41.7% of first choices. State representative Omar Fateh, who was compared to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, was in hot pursuit in second place with 31.6% of the vote. It was a dramatic race from start to finish. Fateh tried to overcome the mayor’s incumbency by using the ranked ballots to build a coalition among several of the competitor candidates. Fateh and two of his fellow candidates crossed endorsed each other and campaigned together as part of a “slate for progress.” Several endorsing organizations also started to employ ranked endorsements as a way of maximizing the power of their organizational voice. While there were some strong differences between candidates, campaigns remained largely civil.

Voters enthusiastically responded by ranking a full slate of candidates, with 94% of all voters ultimately having a say in picking either Frey and Fateh. Incumbent Frey ultimately was re-elected with 53% of votes in the final round of the RCV count. Yet Fateh’s coalition-building and cross-candidate collaboration certainly helped him make it close, because he gained nearly 20,000 votes between the first and final rounds of the RCV count, compared to the 12,000 votes Frey gained.

Cambridge, MA, voters used proportional RCV to elect their City Council and School Committee. Even more than single-winner RCV, proportional RCV makes even more votes count, and ensures that the vast majority of voters are able to elect a candidate of their choice. This year, 90% of Cambridge voters ranked a winning candidate for City Council, and 85% ranked a winning candidate for School Committee.

FairVote found that across all of these mayoral contests, RCV led to an average of 19% more voters having their vote count to make a difference in the outcome of those elections. That means a lot more people had a sense that their vote is worth something, and that they were not throwing their vote away by picking a candidate who had no chance of winning. Or even worse, by voting for a spoiler candidate that resulted in the perverse outcome of a voter’s “greater of two evils” candidate winning.

Meanwhile, in New York City’s “choose-one” elections – same ol’ nasty politics

A sharp contrast to what happened in the mayoral elections in those RCV cities was the New York City mayoral election. Ironically, New York City used ranked choice voting for its partisan primaries in June to decide the mayoral nominees for each political party. But then the Big Apple reverted to the same old defective “choose one and the highest vote-getter wins” type of election in the November runoff to decide the mayors contest.

Usually it’s not a big deal because, in this liberal city, the winner of the Democratic primary usually wins the November election. But this year, after the controversial candidate Zohran Mamdani vanquished the controversial candidate Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, former governor Cuomo decided to run in November as an independent candidate. Suddenly NYC had a competitive election in November with four candidates running, but without RCV and ranked ballots to ensure a majority winner.

Everyone knows how this one turned out. Cuomo the independent, Mamdani the Democrat and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa all viciously attacked each other. Debates became highly negative, and New Yorkers heard the worst of the worst about the candidates, one of whom would soon become their new mayor. As FairVote’s report of this race pointed out, the campaigns were “dominated by discussion of which candidates were playing ‘spoiler’ and who should drop out – rather than candidate platforms and the issues facing the city.”

Without RCV for this election, New Yorkers missed out on the benefits of ranked ballots, which would have incentivized coalition building and candidate collaboration. With the supporters of Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in a position to possibly decide the outcome, both Mamdani and Cuomo might well have benefited from reaching out to those more conservative voters. The dynamics of the race would have changed dramatically.

As the FairVote report concluded,

“RCV may have delivered the same outcome – a majority win for Mamdani. (Mamdani earned more votes than Sliwa and Cuomo combined.) However, RCV would have changed the tone of the campaign and empowered voters. Voters could honestly rank their favorite candidate first, without fear that doing so would help the candidate they like least.”

Voters would not have to fear that “a vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani,” as the Cuomo camp emphatically stated in an effort to drive Republican voters to vote for him.

Lessons to learn

New York City should expand ranked choice voting to its November general election so all voters can have better choices and better elections. And the rest of the US should adopt RCV for presidential and congressional elections, as well as elections for governors and other offices. RCV puts voters first and gives them more choices without fear of spoilers or vote splitting. It incentivizes candidates to build coalitions and not tear down the opposition, but instead to try and find some common ground as a way to woo second rankings from their supporters.

As FairVote’s report points out, “Ranked choice voting also makes more votes count. If a voter’s first choice can’t win, they can still express their preference among the strongest candidates – an opportunity that ‘choose-one’ elections do not offer.”

These RCV elections demonstrated the miracle of ranked ballots. The attractive features that were on display in these RCV elections in various cities are all ones that our national politics desperately need.

Steven Hill @StevenHill1776 @StevenHill1776 bsky.social