Charlottesville's Festive Election Results

The voter education campaign for Charlottesville's first ranked choice election is officially underway! We know that learning by doing is the best way to spread the word about ranked choice, so we teamed up with the City of Charlottesville to name this year's downtown holiday tree. More than 750 people cast ranked choice ballots in this year's contest, which featured four festive candidates for the tree's official name.

And the winner is ... Spruce Lee!  

Here's a detailed breakdown of the ranked choice results:

• Spruce Lee was the early leader with 37% of the first-round votes. The other three candidates were nearly tied with roughly 20% each. Since Treelor Swift came in last, she was eliminated from the race, and her supporters' votes went to their second choice. 
• Most of the Swifties chose Spruce Lee next, so Spruce's lead grew in Round 2. After two rounds, Spruce had 47% of the votes, ahead of Boots With The Fir (28%) and Oatmeal III (24%). Since Oatmeal came in last, the Oatmeal supporters' votes went to their next choice in Round 3.  
• In the final round between Spruce and Boots, Spruce Lee was the clear favorite, winning 59% of the final round votes. 

The beauty of ranked choice voting is that everyone got to have a say in the final decision, including the 40% of voters who chose Oatmeal or Treelor Swift as their favorite. In a ranked choice election, even if your favorite doesn't win, you can still help pick the winner with your backup choices. That means you don't have to worry about "wasting" your vote by supporting the candidate you like best. 

A note on "inactive ballots":

The last row of the results table shows that 3% of ballots were "inactive" in the final round. A ballot is "inactive" if the voter chose not to rank any of the candidates competing in that round, so those 3% are people who voted for Oatmeal or Treelor Swift but didn't rank Spruce or Boots at all. While you're not required to rank all the candidates, choosing not to rank someone means you may have to sit out the later rounds if your favorite doesn't win. That's why it's always a good idea to rank all the candidates from best to worst. Ranking all the options ensures you'll always have a say in the final winner.

‍

What if there were two winning trees?

This race had one winner because the City has one official holiday tree, but some elections have more than winner, like Charlottesville City Council. When the City holds its first ranked choice election next June, voters will be nominating two candidates for Council, so it's worth exploring how this race would have worked with two winners.

When electing two winners, each winner needs to earn at least ⅓ of the votes.

Here's why: if two candidates each have more than ⅓ , then all the other candidates must have less than ⅓, so we know those two must be the top two.

The same principle can be used to select any number of winners:

• If there's only one winner, the winner must earn at least ½ the votes.
• If there are two winners, each winner needs at least ⅓ of the votes.
• In a three-seat race, each winner needs ¼ of the votes. 
• In a race with N open seats, each winner needs at least 1 / (N + 1) votes to win a seat

What if a candidate gets more votes than they need to win?

Their extra votes (or "surplus" votes) go to the voters' next choices.

Remember: the goal of ranked choice is to give everyone the freedom to vote for who they really like without fear of "wasting" their vote, so once your favorite candidate has enough votes to win, your support will go to your next choice. You don't have to worry about supporting someone who's too popular, just like you don't have to worry about supporting someone who's not popular enough.

Here's how the results would look with two winners in the tree-naming contest:

• Spruce Lee won 37% of the first-choice votes. That's enough to earn a seat, so Spruce gets elected in Round 1. Since Spruce got more votes than he needed to win, the extra 4% of votes go to their second choice in Round 2.
• No one else has enough support to win a seat in Round 2, so the last-place candidate is eliminated, and the Swifties' votes go to their next choice.
• In Round 3, Boots now has more than ⅓ of the votes and wins the second seat.

In short, we choose two winners using the same principles as the single-winner race:

• We use a runoff to narrow the field to the candidate(s) with the most support.
• No one's vote is wasted. If your favorite can't win, your vote will go to your next choice, and if your favorite has more support than they need, your vote will help select the next winner.

Those powerful principles ensure that every voter has a meaningful say in the outcome, which is what democracy is all about.

We're grateful to the City of Charlottesville and all 753 voters for participating in this fun and festive exercise. If you have questions or feedback to share about the process or results, please let us know at hello@rankedchoiceva.org. We're planning to hold more fun elections as Charlottesville voters get ready to rank next June, and we'd love to learn from this trial run. (And if you'd like to hold your own ranked choice election, drop us a line! We'd be happy to help you set one up.)