Snapshot of RCV in the U.S.
Current Snapshot of RCV Use in the United States
As of July 2021, over 9.3 million voting-age citizens live in U.S. jurisdictions that currently use RCV, or have adopted RCV and plan to implement it for their next round of elections.
Since 2004, when San Francisco first began using RCV to elect municipal offices, there have been 494 RCV elections across 26 jurisdictions, with over 20 million ranked choice ballots cast. The graph below depicts the number of contests in each jurisdiction that presently use RCV or which plan to implement RCV in their next elections.
https://e.infogram.com/242bab36-c0f1-4d06-8aeb-933467b8bfa9?src=embedRCV Electionsnoborder:none;allowfullscreen55018870
Of the 50 jurisdictions presently or imminently using RCV to elect offices:
- 33 exclusively use or will use single-winner RCV (instant runoff voting), including Alaska and Maine for all federal elections
- 4 exclusively use or will use proportional RCV (also known as multi-winner RCV or single transferable vote) for city council and/or school board elections: Cambridge MA, Eastpointe MI, Arden DE, and Albany CA.
- 3 use some combination of single-winner and proportional RCV -- Minneapolis MN, Palm Desert CA, and Amherst MA
- 10 use a combination of single-winner RCV and a multi-winner method called sequential RCV-- Portland ME and 9 cities in Utah
