Voters across America are warming up to the notion of an alternative election system, with the midterms resulting in expansion of ranked-choice voting. And RCV’s proponents head into Thanksgiving feeling good about the state of reform in America.
November voting saw RCV initiatives triumph in Nevada, Seattle and a number of other notable cities across America.
“We saw another good run on the ballot,” said Rob Richie, CEO of the election reform group FairVote. “We’re just doing our year end communication to supporters and I just genuinely feel really optimistic.”
In Nevada voters approved a ballot initiative proposing a change to ranked-choice voting for state and congressional elections (but not for presidential contests), with 52.8 percent in favor. However, the state requires such changes to go through a second round of approval, so there will be another vote in 2024. If that measure is adopted, it will also institute an open primary in which all candidates appear on one ballot with the five candidates who capture the most votes advancing to the RCV general election. The earliest RCV could be implemented in Nevada would be the 2026 midterm election.
In another two-part decision, Seattle voters were asked whether they would prefer ranked choice voting or approval voting, a system that allows voters to support as many votes as they prefer. A big majority (76 percent to 24 percent) answered that they would prefer RCV, but a second question asked Seattle voters whether they even want to make a change. The nearly complete totals show 51 percent opted to reform the city’s primary election system, although the results have yet to be certified.
Other cities – including Portland, Ore.; Portland, Maine; Ojai, Calif.; and Evanston, Ill. – also adopted RCV this year.
While local organizations were heavily involved in many of these campaigns, FairVote has been a leader at the national level. The nonpartisan organization advocates for ranked-choice voting and multimember representation (unless the current congressional system in which each House district has one lawmaker). The group hopes to see RCV implemented in 10 presidential primaries by 2024.
Richie, is “very optimistic” about the future of ranked-choice voting. In 1992, he deteremind RCV is the best way to mitigate a lack of representation in Congress and the growing polarization between the two-party system.
FairVote and its allies have had some other big wins heading into the 2022 elections. New York City approved a move to RCV for municipal elections in 2019, and that system debuted two years later.
Richie also pointed to Alaska, which became the second state to adopt RCV for federal and state elections in 2020. Voters in Alaska got to try out the system for the first time this year, and it led to notable outcomes, including divided government. Democrat Mary Peltola, won an RCV special election earlier this year to become the first Alaska Native elected to Congress. She is now waiting for the second round of counting to determine whether she will defeat former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a second time and earn a full term in the House.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, is also under 50 percent after the first round of counting but is expected to win reelection once the last place candidate is eliminated.
Richie noted that Alaska “will be governed by a bipartisan coalition” — an outcome that stemmed from RCV and its ability to “create incentives for the candidates to not be so driven by party labels but to reach beyond their base and make a case for themselves.”
Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, is an alternative system in which voters rank multiple candidates by preference instead of voting for a singular candidate. In most elections across the country, winners of the election are the individuals who earn the most votes. However, RCV candidates only win if they get more than 50 percent of votes. If no candidates receive a majority, the candidate with the fewest is eliminated and their ballots will go to each voter’s second-choice. This continues until there is an outright winner.
The system had been in use long before New York and Alaska adopted it. It began gaining wider traction in 2016 when Maine made the switch for its gubernatorial, legislative and congressional elections.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain. 
