Imagine your team is voting on a Q3 team offsite location. Five people want Barcelona, four want Lisbon, and three want Amsterdam. Under standard majority voting, Barcelona wins — but 7 out of 12 people voted against it. Now imagine everyone ranks their top 3 choices. Almost everyone who picked Lisbon has Lisbon as first and Barcelona as second, or vice versa. After redistributing votes from the eliminated option (Amsterdam), Lisbon emerges as the winner with 8 of 12 first-or-second-choice votes. That's ranked choice voting: finding the option that the most people can genuinely support, not just the one with the most passionate first-place advocates.
What is ranked choice voting?
Ranked choice voting (RCV) — also called instant-runoff voting, preferential voting, or alternative vote — is a voting method where each participant ranks the available options from most preferred to least preferred, rather than choosing just one. The winner is determined through a series of elimination rounds. Options are eliminated one at a time (starting with the least popular) and their votes are redistributed to each voter's next preference. This continues until one option has a majority of active votes. The result is a winner that has genuine broad support — not just a plurality in a crowded field.
How ranked choice voting works (step by step)
Each voter ranks all options
Instead of choosing one option, each voter ranks every option in order of preference: 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, and so on. They don't need to rank options they strongly dislike — they can stop wherever they choose.
Count first-place votes
Count all the first-place votes for each option. If any option has more than 50% of first-place votes, it wins immediately. In practice, with many options, no option often clears 50% on the first count.
Eliminate the last-place option
The option with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. The ballots that had that option as their first choice are redistributed — each ballot moves to the voter's next ranked preference.
Repeat until a majority winner emerges
After redistribution, recount the votes. If an option now has more than 50% of active votes, it wins. If not, eliminate the new last-place option and redistribute again. Continue until one option has a majority.
A worked example
Ten people are voting on a team name. The options are: "Orbit," "Nexus," "Pulse," and "Forge." Here's how the votes land:
Round 1 — first-place votes
Orbit: 3 first-place votes. Nexus: 3 votes. Pulse: 2 votes. Forge: 2 votes. No option has a majority (5+ votes). Forge and Pulse are tied for last — in a tie, either can be eliminated (most systems eliminate the one with fewer second-choice votes). Forge is eliminated.
Round 2 — redistribute Forge's votes
Both Forge voters had Pulse as their second choice. Those 2 votes move to Pulse. New counts: Orbit: 3. Nexus: 3. Pulse: 4. No majority yet. Orbit and Nexus are tied — redistribute based on next preferences.
Round 3 — Pulse wins with majority support
After redistributing Orbit's and Nexus's votes, Pulse emerges with 6 of 10 active votes — a clear majority. Pulse wins. Crucially, Pulse only had 2 first-place votes, but was the second or third choice of many other voters — it's the option most people can live with.
Ranked choice vs majority voting
Both methods are valid — they just answer different questions.
Majority voting answers: "What does the most people want most?"
Each person picks one option. The option with the most votes wins — even if it only has 30% of votes when the field is crowded. This can elect a "minority favourite" that most people actively dislike. It's fast, familiar, and works well when there are only 2-3 options.
Ranked choice answers: "What can the most people support?"
The winner has to achieve majority consensus through multiple rounds. This finds the option that, while perhaps not everyone's first choice, has the broadest overall acceptance. This produces decisions with higher post-decision buy-in — people who didn't get their first choice still feel their preferences were counted.
When to use each method for team decisions
Use majority voting when: 2-3 options, or you need speed
Simple binary or trinary choices are clear enough that majority voting produces a clean result. If you're choosing between two vendors or three dates, majority voting is fast and sufficient.
Use ranked choice when: 4+ options, or strong factional preferences
When you have four or more options and there are likely to be clusters of opinion (some people strongly for A, others strongly for B, with C and D as reasonable compromises), ranked choice will find a better consensus candidate than majority voting.
Use ranked choice for prioritisation exercises
When ranking which projects to prioritise, which features to build next, or which risks to address first, ranked choice surfaces the order of preference across the whole team rather than just the top choice. This is especially useful for quarterly planning.
Using ranked choice voting in your team
You don't need to calculate the rounds manually. Chooseday handles the round-by-round redistribution automatically and shows the full elimination process so your team can see how the winner emerged. This transparency is important: it shows the result isn't arbitrary, and lets people see how their second-choice votes may have influenced the outcome. To run a ranked choice vote in Chooseday: create a new decision, add your options, and select "Ranked choice" as the voting method. Participants rank the options by drag-and-drop. When the deadline passes, the result is calculated and the full round breakdown is visible to everyone.
Frequently asked questions
Ranked choice voting (also called instant-runoff voting) is a method where voters rank options from most to least preferred instead of picking just one. The winner is determined by eliminating the option with the fewest first-place votes and redistributing those votes to voters' next preferences, repeating until one option has a majority.
Each voter ranks all options 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. First, count all first-place votes. If any option has more than 50%, it wins immediately. If not, eliminate the option with the fewest first-place votes and redistribute those ballots to each voter's next choice. Repeat until one option has a majority.
Use ranked choice voting when you have 4 or more options and want to find the option with the broadest support — not just the one with the most passionate minority. It's especially useful when there are strong advocates for multiple different options that might split the vote.
In majority voting, each person picks one option and the most votes wins — even if that's only 30% in a crowded field. In ranked choice voting, the winner must achieve genuine majority support through redistribution rounds. Ranked choice prevents a minority favourite from winning just because similar options split the vote.
Yes — Chooseday supports ranked choice voting on all plans including the free tier. When creating a decision, you can choose between majority voting and ranked choice depending on the number of options and the type of consensus you're looking for.
Yes — Chooseday supports anonymous ranked choice voting. Participants submit their full ranking anonymously. The elimination rounds are calculated automatically and the breakdown is shown in aggregate, without revealing individual rankings.