ARLINGTON, Va. — Ranked choice voting could be the norm in Arlington County elections moving froward, depending on the outcome of a board vote.
The County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on whether they will use the method at their Saturday morning meeting.
Proponents of ranked choice voting, or RCV, say it creates better choices, while opponents say it's confusing and disruptive.
Here's how the voting method works.
If a candidate wins in a landslide, there is no change to the process — they are elected. But if they don’t win by more than 50% that’s when the ranking systems comes into play.
According to Fair Vote, a bipartisan nonprofit based in Takoma Park, RCV only works with more than three people on the ballot and a candidate must get more than 50% to win.
With RCV, a voter ranks their candidates in order of preference. Ballots are counted in rounds. Round one focuses on everyone’s first choice pick. If a candidate doesn't get at least 50% of the vote, round two happens, with the lowest-ranked candidate being tossed out.
The ballots with that losing candidate still get counted again with a focus now on the voter's second choice. The process repeats itself until someone eventually reaches 50% to win the election.
Voters got a taste of ranked choice voting back in June, when it was used RCV for the 2023 Democratic primary election for the office of County Board, which had two seats up for grabs.
"I think we've only had a couple of people so far who needed our assistance," Chief Election Officer Brad Harmon said after the election in June.
The offices for State Senate, House of Delegates, Commonwealth's Attorney, and Sheriff did not use ranked choice voting.
When WUSA9 talked to voters back in June who experienced the new process, we heard mixed reviews.
"I liked having the option to vote for more than one candidate especially in a primary where some of the platforms are similar," voter Kerry Baumann shared with WUSA9 at the time.
"It's very straightforward when you can just vote for one candidate," another voter Jason Poland said. "If there's more than one, or you have the option to vote for more than two, and then the weighting of each candidate -- it's just very complicated."
A month after the primary, the county decided not to use the method in November's general election.
Since then, the Arlington Board of Elections has studied the results and polled voters. They found around 47% said it should be done in every election, while 32% said they didn't want to see it used at all.
RELATED: VERIFY | No, Arlington County is not the first municipality in the DMV to use ranked choice voting
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