Rather than casting a single vote in a binary election, in ranked choice voting residents rank multiple candidates in order of preference.
Summit County cities Coalville, Oakley and Park City as well as Wasatch County town Hideout are all considering switching to ranked choice voting for this November’s municipal races. Heber has used the system for two elections so far.
Cities and towns have been able to test ranked choice voting since 2018. The pilot program allowing municipalities to test the voting system expires on Jan. 1, 2026, although a bill to extend it another 10 years is currently before the legislature.
Alan Parry, an associate professor of mathematics at Utah Valley University, said ranked choice voting is also known as instant runoff voting. In the system, the candidate who receives a majority of votes wins. If there’s no majority in the first round, the candidate with the fewest amount of first-choice votes is eliminated and voters’ second choice is included in the next round.
This continues until one candidate receives a majority.
Parry said under this system, more people typically vote because a separate runoff election that would require them to return to the polls isn’t needed.
“What you end up finding is the second election has a massive amount, typically, of people who don't come back and vote in the second election,” Parry said. “So you have a lot of people who don't represent their voices in the second election.”
In ranked choice systems, this isn’t a problem; a person’s second choice is already known and a second election isn’t necessary. The system is also more cost-effective for candidates as they don’t have to campaign for a primary.
Parry said ranked choice voting also prevents strategic voting.
“You might be more likely to indicate who you actually prefer as your first choice, as opposed to voting for the lesser of two evils, which is sort of the main strategy that you get in plurality,” he said.
However, there are criticisms of the ranked choice system. Parry said one is that the system can fail what’s known as the “monotonicity property,” but it’s rare.
“In very strange cases, you can potentially change who is going to get eliminated and it ends up causing this weird problem where if you add more support to your candidate it actually could potentially hurt them,” he said.
Ranked choice voting can also fail to elect what's called a “Condorcet winner.” That’s when a candidate loses even if they would win when running head-to-head with each candidate. Plurality also has this issue, but it also can elect a Condorcet loser.
“There's sort of the opposite idea of what's called a Condorcet loser, which is somebody who loses in every possible pairwise runoff that they're in, plurality voting is capable of electing the Condorcet loser,” Parry said.
A plurality system also is the main driver of the two-party system, which ranked choice voting prevents.
According to 2024 research by Parry, 81% of Utahns in 2021 and 2023 found ranked choice voting at least somewhat easy to use. In 2021, 63% of Utahns indicated they liked ranked choice voting at least somewhat. In 2023, 58% indicated they liked the system.
Wasatch Back municipalities have until May 1 to decide to use ranked choice voting this November.
