D.C.’s June primary election may be the District’s most consequential in decades. And it’s not just the races on the ballot that are significant, it’s also how they’ll be presented and how voters will choose candidates.
Ranked choice voting makes its debut in D.C. on June 16, after voters supported implementing the method in a 2024 ballot initiative.
D.C. Board of Elections Executive Director Monica Holman Evans explained the process in the video below.
For voters, it’s a big change compared to what they may be used to 鈥� so much so that some council members attempted to delay the implementation of ranked choice voting to 2027 to give the Board of Elections more time to train the public and ensure a fair election.
Ranked choice voting was included in Initiative 83, which voters passed with more than 72% of the vote in 2024. Initiative 83 also included a provision that would allow independent voters to cast ballots in D.C. primaries.
How it works
Rather than simply selecting one candidate in a race, ranked choice voting allows voters to rank up to five candidates in a single race by order of preference. Voters can still select just one candidate by ranking them as their top preference, if they so choose.
While voters can select fewer than five candidates, if they choose to rank five candidates, voters should not skip ranks (rank one candidate first and another third, but not select a second). Voters also should not rank the same candidate twice or rank two different candidates the same.
Candidates will be listed by row and ranks will be listed by column. Voters should always fill in the first column for their top candidate. If voters wish to rank more candidates, they should go column by column, filling in the bubble corresponding to their next preferred candidate.
Tabulating the votes
Under ranked choice voting, a candidate must attain a majority of the votes to win. In the first round of tabulation, only the first choice of voters is considered. If a candidate doesn’t pass 50% of the vote, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and the second choice of the voters who ranked the eliminated candidate first will be counted.
If still no candidate has reached a majority, the same process happens again until someone reaches a majority of the vote.
If there is a tie at any point in the process, it’s decided by a coin flip. The Board of Elections says on its website that scenario is “extremely unlikely.”
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
漏 2026 海角精品黑料. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
