Ranked-choice voting’s losing streak gets longer

It has been a dismal year for ranked-choice voting.

RCV allows voters to rank candidates instead of choosing one. It then runs multiple rounds of counting, adjusts rankings, and discards “exhausted” ballots to determine a winner.

Lawmakers, courts, cities, and voters are increasingly rejecting a system that makes elections harder to understand and easier to distrust.

Two states have already banned it. One state’s pilot program was phased out. A statewide ballot proposal failed to qualify. Several city councils rejected it. A state supreme court struck down an expansion bill. And the year still has months to go.

The states that banned RCV this year were Indiana and Ohio. The Ohio legislature first introduced a ban in 2023. It passed the Senate but not the House. This year, lawmakers