It is no secret that many voters and political commentators are frustrated that their ballots cast early for withdrawn candidates were “wasted.” In fact, at this point in the primary, there are currently over 1.5 million votes that fall into that unfortunate category.

In 2020, more voters will use ranked ballots in federal elections than ever before. Naturally, that includes Maine’s upcoming uses, and the four states holding their Democratic primary elections with RCV. But it also includes a state you might not realize includes ranked ballots in their elections: Alabama.

For the past few weeks, millions of voters across the country—in Super Tuesday and March 2020 states like Texas, California, Minnesota, and Washington—have been casting early ballots for their preferred candidates in the presidential primary.

We need a voting method which allows voters to indicate backup choices, especially in volatile races with crowded fields such as this one.  

Five states--Nevada, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, and Wyoming--have used or will use ranked choice voting in the presidential primary process. Let us take you through the implementation process in these states.

The Democratic primary season is heating up as we head into Super Tuesday. Conflicting narratives on the nature of the still-crowded field’s divided support and questions over which candidate would be strongest nominee in the general election dominate the conversation. Now, FairVote has commissioned a SurveyUSA poll to help shed light on these questions, with ranked choice voting (RCV) providing new insights.

Let’s take a look at the novel way in which RCV was used in Nevada and how it impacted results. 

New Hampshire’s presidential primaries certainly ran more smoothly than Iowa’s caucuses, but the results illustrate a pitfall of crowded fields — the “wasted vote”.