YSK that in 16 States in the USA has banned Ranked-Choice voting, including 5 that has just banned it in 2025, and 6 of those bans happened in 2024.
YSK that in 16 States in the USA has banned Ranked-Choice voting, including 5 that has just banned it in 2025, and 6 of those bans happened in 2024.
RCV trends: Four states ban RCV in 2025, bringing the number of states with bans to 15.
(Okay idk why it says 15 up here then later says 16, somebody on that site probably didn't update the title text)
As of April 30, five states had banned RCV in 2025, which brought the total number of states that prohibit RCV to 16.
- Gov. Mark Gordon (Republican) signed HB 165 on March 18.
- West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (Republican) signed SB 490 the March 19.
- Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (Democrat) signed SB 6 into law on April 1.
- North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong (Republican) signed HB 1297 on April 15.
- Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican) signed HB 1706 which became law on April 17.
Six states banned RCV in 2024.
Why YSK: If you're a US-American, its time to pay attention to State and Local politics instead of solely on the Federal. There is a trend in conservative jurisdictions to stop progress in making elecoral systems more fair. Use this opportunity as a rallying-cry to pass Ranked-Choice Voting in progressive jurisdictions, and hopefully everyone else takes notes. Sometimes, all you need is a few states adopting a law to become the catalyst for it to become the model for the entire country, for better or for worse. Don't allow anti-RCV legislations to dominate, counter the propaganda with pro-RCV arguments. Time to turn the tide.
Edit: fixed formatting
Edit 2: Added in the map so you don't have to click the link:
See the pattern? 🤔
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Really bugs me how americans talk about "ranked choice voting" because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, "ranked ballots" meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
Really bugs me how americans talk about “ranked choice voting” because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, “ranked ballots” meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
This is in the context of US State Legislations, Ranked-Choice Voting is what most laws refer to them as.
In most contexts, we're mostly talking about Single-Winner elections.
Sometimes, the same concept has different names to different people, there isn't a name that's more "real" than others.
I don't really care what the law calls it. One time an American law tried to call pi equal to 3.2. Had it passed both houses instead of only one, that still wouldn't have changed what pi actually is.
Ranked-Choice describes a feature of a large number of voting systems. Namely, any system that involves ranking candidates in order of preference. Instant-Runoff Voting and Single Transferable Vote are the two most popular such systems, but there are many others, including the Borda method and Ranked Pairs. It's better to just be clearer about what it is you actually mean, rather than use an ambiguous term that's going to lead to more confusion.
In most contexts, we're mostly talking about Single-Winner elections.
In the context of electoral systems, "Congress" and "Senate" are multi-seat legislatures. Hence the talk about proportional representation, IE how many Americans vote Democrat vs how many Democrats get elected. Without that discussion you'll never get a 3rd party elected.
The senate is voted only within a state, one senator at a time. the house of representatives again is done by states, but has a different number for each state.
and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system
Umm. Hi, Australia here. We've used IRV for our House of Representatives since 1918. IRV is definitely flawed, and I've said in the past it's the "worst acceptable system"*. But it's better in every way than FPTP, and definitely doesn't exacerbate a trend towards two parties. It doesn't create a proportional result that truly helps break the two-party system like STV (most notably used by Australia's Senate or Ireland's Dáil) or MMP (notably used in New Zealand and Germany) would, but it doesn't entrench it any more than FPTP. In fact, as of today, Australia's crossbench consists of only 1 fewer person than its Opposition, because independents and third parties have been rising considerably over the past 15 years or so, particularly at the 2022 and 2025 elections.
You're right that people should be clear about whether they mean IRV, STV, or another ordinal system, though.
* the intent being to highlight that FPTP is an entirely undemocratic and unacceptable system to ever use.
We studied it in Canada, including how it was used in Australia, and it was the only electoral systems out of all the ones listed that actually widened the gap between voter intention and seat distribution from FPTP.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/42-1/ERRE/report-3/page-174#49
Specifically here, where it is called "Alternative Vote":
I'm mostly just frustrated about how it keeps getting renamed.
But it is entirely possible to invent an electoral system that is worse than what we have now, and it seems politicians might have done that with IRV.
Specifically here, where it is called “Alternative Vote”
Yeah that seems to be a very common alternative name. I'm especially not a fan of that name, since all it tells you is that it's "not FPTP". At least "Preferential voting" or "ranked choice voting" tells you something of the ballot.
