RCV trends: Four states ban RCV in 2025, bringing the number of states with bans to 15.
(Okay idk why it says 15 up here then later says 16, somebody on that site probably didn’t update the title text)
As of April 30, five states had banned RCV in 2025, which brought the total number of states that prohibit RCV to 16.
- Gov. Mark Gordon (Republican) signed HB 165 on March 18.
- West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (Republican) signed SB 490 the March 19.
- Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (Democrat) signed SB 6 into law on April 1.
- North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong (Republican) signed HB 1297 on April 15.
- Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican) signed HB 1706 which became law on April 17.
Six states banned RCV in 2024.
Why YSK: If you’re a US-American, its time to pay attention to State and Local politics instead of solely on the Federal. There is a trend in conservative jurisdictions to stop progress in making elecoral systems more fair. Use this opportunity as a rallying-cry to pass Ranked-Choice Voting in progressive jurisdictions, and hopefully everyone else takes notes. Sometimes, all you need is a few states adopting a law to become the catalyst for it to become the model for the entire country, for better or for worse. Don’t allow anti-RCV legislations to dominate, counter the propaganda with pro-RCV arguments. Time to turn the tide.
Edit: fixed formatting
Edit 2: Added in the map so you don’t have to click the link:
See the pattern? 🤔
Nothing screams “democracy” like explicitely banning a voting system
well, to be fair, shitty electoral systems should be banned, like FPTP, because they aren’t representative. what’s happening here is sadly the opposite.
It still shouldn’t be banned, it should be up for debate when picking a system. Explicitly banning a system is pretty much anti-democratic by nature.
No it is not. Agreeing on that it should be banned is a democratic choice. It is an anti-democratic system not fit for purpose in 2025. our understanding of electoral science and maths is much more advanced now. FPTP should NEVER be on the table.
FPTP is fine in many small scale applications. How should a town of 5,000 people elect their mayor otherwise?
Approval
Ranked choice is still better though… scale doesn’t really matter here, the point is to let people vote for who they want, not for who they think might win.
On that level you often only have two, one or sometimes no candidate.
There is no need to enforce a more complicated system that needs to be explained to everyone, risks more people accidentally voting different than they wanted or invalidating their vote by misunderstanding the rules.
I have helped with elections in Germany where the parliament has two votes. One for the local candidate FPTP and one for a party, where the parties proportional rates are then assembled in the parliament. I had to explain people the votes and what they do all the time. Because the two votes are on one paper it is a mess to count, as you can’t just stack them easily because of the possible combinations.
When it gets to state and national levels having proportional systems for parliaments and ranked choice for single candidates i am all for it. But there is no point in pushing for a more complicated system for smaller elections.
It’s not anymore complicated. This is the exact argument that got it banned in my state. Because some people think we’re too stupid to count to 2. No if there are only 2 candidates you vore for one or the other and if you really want to be special you can rank them even if it won’t matter. This is not a difficult concept.
Yeah that makes sense. I guess once people get used to ranked voting in large elections, then you could have it in small elections too. Thanks for the reply.
Explicitly