FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 19, 2025
How to Vote in a Ranked Choice Election
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – On June 17, Charlottesville will hold its first election using ranked choice voting for the two open seats on the Charlottesville City Council.
In a ranked choice election, you don't just vote for one candidate. You get to rank the candidates in the order you like them. Each candidate appears on a separate row, as seen on this upcoming election’s ballot (link). Voters mark the first column for their favorite candidate, the second column for the candidate they like next, and the third column for the candidate they like least.
In a ranked choice election with two winners, candidates need to earn at least 1/3 of the votes to win a seat.
Why 1/3? Because only two candidates can each win more than a 1/3 of the votes.
The ballots are counted in rounds until two candidates get enough votes to win.
In Round 1, the first-choice votes are counted. If two candidates each get more than 1/3 of the votes, they both win, and the race is over.
If only one candidate gets enough votes to win in Round 1, the winner's extra votes (above 1/3) go to the voters' second choice candidates in Round 2. The candidate that wins more than 1/3 of the votes in Round 2 wins the second seat.
Why is Charlottesville Using Ranked Choice Voting?
Ranked choice voting lets voters express their honest views about all the candidates. A voter can't waste their vote by ranking their favorite candidate first, and voters can support a second candidate without fear of hurting their favorite.
Under Charlottesville's former election system, voters could support two candidates but not express a preference between them, leading many voters to "single shot" or "bullet vote" to avoid hurting their favorite candidate by using their second vote.
The Charlottesville Democratic Party requested a ranked choice primary, and City Council granted the request with guidance from the City Registrar and Electoral Board, in keeping with state law (link). In a memo (link) to the City Council last August, the City Registrar wrote that "ranked choice voting has been successfully adopted in various localities and states across the nation and has been shown by research (link) to support more diverse candidate pools and improved civility in campaigns and elections".
To register to vote online, check your registration status, or to find your polling place, please visit https://www.rankedchoiceva.org/charlottesville/how-to-vote
Media Contact:
Afton Schneider
Director of Communications & Public Engagement
City of Charlottesville
434-996-0331
media@charlottesville.gov