Explore the reform

With proportional ranked choice voting, instead of living in a district with a single representative, you will be part of a larger region that elects a small delegation of representatives. The delegation will include both Democrats and Republicans, and will include leaders from different regional, racial, and ideological communities across the multi-winner district.

Below are examples of what multi-winner district maps might look like under proportional ranked choice voting. These were drawn roughly according to the districting requirements found in the Fair Representation Act, which involves using exclusively three and five-winner districts if possible. It keeps the total number of representatives apportioned to each state the same as it is today, and meets the constitutional requirement that each district have an equal number of people per representative elected.

In a multi-winner district, each political party will have multiple nominees. That means that your district will have several Republicans and several Democrats running, and may also have independent candidates and nominees of other political parties. Normally, you can expect the nominees of a single party to campaign collaboratively. That means that candidates will not only ask you to rank them first, but will also encourage you to rank their teammates second, third, and so on.

Each party will want to run a diverse slate, appealing to different kinds of voters. Each party slate will want to run people who live in different parts of the district, and who have built up a positive reputation with different communities. Not every candidate will try to campaign to everyone in the district, but instead will probably focus on the areas where people are more likely to know and support them.

During the campaign, candidates will ask you to rank them first, or may even ask you to rank them second if you clearly prefer one of their opponents. When it comes time to fill out your ballot, that’s what you will be able to do: rank all the candidates you support in order of choice.

Ballots like the one above are used by millions of voters in ranked choice voting contests every election cycle. Congressional elections conducted by proportional ranked choice voting will be competitive and high profile, likely attracting anywhere from six to more than two dozen candidates, depending on the nature of the election year and the district. The below ballot was used by Cambridge, Massachusetts to elect its nine-seat city council by proportional ranked choice voting in 2019, when 25 candidates ran, and voters were permitted to rank up to 15 of them, and could even include up to nine write-ins. Although the ballot is quite big, voters used it well: 94% of voters ranked more than one candidate, and 99.7% of ballots cast were valid.

Presently, all ranked choice voting ballots in the United States take this approach of filling in separate bubbles for a first choice, second choice, and so on. However, Scotland and Australia conduct proportional ranked choice voting elections by having voters simply write a number ‘1’ by their first choice, a ‘2’ by their second choice, and so on, and then the voting equipment uses “optical character recognition” or “OCR” to read those numerals. With modern technology that approach works well, and it could be adopted in the United States after a period of study and with regular audits to ensure accuracy. Below is a ballot used in Scotland’s local elections in 2022.

Regardless, voters would continue to use paper ballots, ensuring that all elections could be regularly audited and recounted if appropriate. Nothing in this process would change the ordinary security practices that ensure access to a secret ballot and prevent fraud and tampering.