Under current law, Ranked Choice Voting is a method of voting in which voters rank candidates for office in any order they choose and a single winner is elected. Voters mark their ballots for multiple candidates in order of preference. The ballots are counted and the candidate with the least votes is eliminated. Then, a new round of counting begins with each ballot cast for the eliminated candidate counted toward the voter’s next choice candidate listed on that ballot. This continues until only two candidates are remaining and the candidate with the highest number of votes is declared the winner.
According to the San Francisco Department of Elections, Ranked Choice Voting eliminates the need for separate runoff elections by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. The San Francisco Department of Elections also provides these key points when voting ranked-choice:
- You may rank as many candidates as you like. If you do not want to rank some candidates, leave columns blank.
- Do not fill in more than one oval in the same column. If you give the same ranking to multiple candidates, your vote in that rank and later ranks will not count.
- Do not fill in more than one oval for a candidate. Ranking the same candidate more than once will not help that candidate, because your vote will be counted only once for that candidate.
San Francisco voters have used Rank Choice Voting to fill the following offices since March 2002: Mayor, Assessor-Recorder, City Attorney, District Attorney, Public Defender, Sheriff, Treasurer, and Members of the Board of Supervisors.
If you have further questions, the San Francisco Law Library will be providing voter registration, nonpartisan information, and election resources for the Presidential Primary Election on March 5, 2024.
Other resources:
SF Elections Ranked Choice Voting Brochure: https://sfelections.sfgov.org/sites/default/files/Documents/VoterEducation/2020March/EN/RCV_Brochure.pdf
SF Elections Ranked Choice Voting Practice Tool: https://sfelections.org/tools/demo_rcv/
CA Ranked Choice Voting FAQ: https://votingsystems.cdn.sos.ca.gov/oversight/directives/irv-faq-060409.pdf
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