Charlottesville City Council primary city's first to use ranked choice voting

[RandySF]

In Tuesday’s City Council primary, Charlottesville is about to become the second locality in Virginia — after Arlington County — to use ranked choice voting, after a century of using a winner-take-all block system.

In block voting, voters choose as many candidates as there are open seats for a certain office. With ranked choice voting, voters don’t just select their favorite candidates; instead, they rank as many of the candidates as they would like, in order of their preference.

In ranked choice elections with more than one winner, like the Charlottesville City Council race, when a candidate gets more votes than they need to win, voter’s choices are counted towards their next preference.

Former Charlottesville Del. Sally Hudson, now executive director of Ranked Choice Virginia and fellow at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, said the change creates a system that “respects diversity by design.”



https://www.vpm.org/elections/2025-06-16/charlottesville-council-primary-ranked-choice-sally-hudson-uva-karsh

[pat_k]

1. Great to see.

Now we just need to get State Democratic parties on board with implementing ranked choice in our primary elections. That would be a FANTASTIC way to introduce it across the nation. And it just makes so much sense, it would help it catch on in general elections.

WE are in charge of how our primaries are run. If we claim to be the party of true Democracy, it is time to prove it.