Ranked Choice Voting Explained Using Your Favorite Artists

Voting is tomorrow, June 16th, and D.C. is doing something it has never done before: letting voters rank candidates instead of just picking one. If you’ve heard the term “ranked choice voting” tossed around and felt a little lost, here’s the plain-English version.

How it used to work vs. how it works now

The old way: You picked one candidate. Whoever got the most votes won, even if that was only, say, 30% of voters while 70% wanted someone else.

The new way: Instead of choosing just one, you rank candidates in order of preference: your favorite first, your second favorite next, and so on, up to five candidates. You don’t have to rank all five if you don’t want to.

Counting the votes, step by step

Think of it like an “instant runoff.” Here’s the basic idea:

1. First, all the first-choice votes are counted.
2. If one candidate already has more than 50% of the votes, they win. Done.
3. If nobody hits that mark, the candidate in last place is eliminated.
4. Everyone who ranked that eliminated candidate first now has their vote moved to their next choice.
5. The votes are counted again. Each round drops the lowest candidate and shifts those votes to the next preference, until someone has more than 50% of the votes.

Your ballot always counts as one vote. It just shifts to your backup choice if your top pick can’t win.

An example: a battle of the artists

Say D.C. held an election and the candidates were Beyoncé, Rihanna, Usher, and Chris Brown. Out of 100 voters, here’s how the first-choice rankings came in:

• Beyoncé: 40%
• Rihanna: 30%
• Usher: 20%
• Chris Brown: 10%

Nobody is above 50%, so the counting continues. Chris Brown is in last place, so he’s eliminated. Now we look at who his 10% of voters ranked second. Let’s say 6% picked Usher next and 4% picked Beyoncé. Those votes shift over:

• Beyoncé: 44%
• Rihanna: 30%
• Usher: 26%

Still nobody is above 50%. Usher is now in last place, so he’s eliminated. His 26% of voters get their votes moved to their next choice. Say 16% go to Rihanna and 10% to Beyoncé:

• Beyoncé: 54%
• Rihanna: 46%

Beyoncé is now above 50%, so she wins. Notice that the Chris Brown and Usher fans never “wasted” their votes. Each ballot simply kept moving to the next favorite until a clear winner emerged.

The bottom line

When you go to vote tomorrow, you’ll see the option to rank candidates rather than pick just one. Mark your favorites in order, know that your vote will shift to a backup if needed, and that’s really all there is to it. You can still just pick one candidate if you prefer, but ranking gives you more say in the final outcome. This way, every vote really does matter.