Op-ed: Ranked-Choice Voting in This Year’s Elections Brought Historic Wins for Women

Here is an excerpt from the article:

As of this month, 46 cities have adopted ranked-choice voting (RCV)—also known as instant runoff voting, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. (Ballots that do not help voters’ top choices win, count for their next choice.) During this month’s elections, 11 of these RCV cities across six states held elections, and RCV has proven once again to yield positive outcomes for women.

For the past five years, RepresentWomen has been building up our research on reforms and policies that lead to increased and sustained women’s representation in elected office. Excitingly, year after year, our findings have remained consistent, and this year is no exception: Ranked-choice voting means more women run for office and win. While progress toward gender balance is generally slow and uneven, historic wins for women in RCV cities show that, with systems strategies, not only is change possible, it’s happening in real time.

RepresentWomen’s work seeks to bridge the gap between the women’s representation movement and the democracy reform movement by showing the link between systems strategies such as ranked-choice voting and increased opportunities for women in politics.

What Is Rcv, and How Does It Benefit Women?

In RCV elections, voters rank candidates in order of preference. Once the polls close, all first-choice votes are counted. If a candidate receives a majority of the vote, they are declared the winner. But, if no candidate receives a majority of votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and those votes are transferred to the voters’ second-choice candidate. So, if your first-choice candidate is eliminated, your vote stays in play and is rolled to your second choice, and so on, until a candidate crosses the majority threshold.

Read the full article here.

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