Democrats eye ranked-choice voting for 2028 primaries

https://www.axios.com/2025/11/24/democrats-ranked-choice-voting-2028-primaries

48 comments

  1. If this happens, I will be leaving Newsom and Harris unranked.

  3. We need this because this is how progressives can easily win.  Otherwise progressives need 6 other moderates running to split the vote.  

  4. In several decades of voting, I have never once seen a presidential primary candidate that I favored make it to the general. A shake-up is not unwelcome.

  5. As a Bernie Sanders delegate in 2016 I would love to see this happen. We got hillary crammed down our throats and that meant a lot of people stayed at home. Voila! President Trump!

  6. Ranked-choice voting makes sense. It gives voters more say and can prevent extreme candidates from winning just because the majority splits their vote. Most people would see that as fairer.

  7. This would still require states to change their primary election laws and red states absolutely won’t. Hope they can get around that somehow

  8. Honestly, this would have been welcome in either 2016, 2020, and 2024, and would go a long way towards mending party divides.

  9. This should have been part of the John Lewis voting act and Biden’s fight for Democracy; doubling congress appropriations, and with ranked choice voting would have been a deflection of it benefiting a single party (is really better for third parties)

  10. The presidential primary would be a great use case. Elections happening on different dates and candidates dropping out for any number of reasons even after their names were printed on ballots in other states alone would make this valuable.

    Aldo, since a primary is a consensus gathering activity, traditional RCV, Star, or Approval voting will help guage support of the wider party members.

    I agree, let’s go.

  11. > A second DNC member was more skeptical: “We should follow the lead of the states. They know better.”

    I can assure you, they do not.

  12. The primaries are actually the perfect place for ranked choice voting as well. The field is so big at the start, and people may stay in if they are 2nd in some early primaries where the first person is likely to drop or something.

  13. I’m all for the spirit of Ranked Choice Voting, but there are so many variations that we need to make sure we do it right. We should invite specialists to give us a good system.

  14. I did my part. I organized a chili cook-off and had people vote using a rank choice. People liked the concept.

  15. It makes a lot of sense for primaries. Instead of picking one candidate and worrying your vote won’t matter if they drop out, you rank your favorites. It encourages candidates to appeal to a broader group and cuts down on negative campaigning. Many would see it as a fairer, smarter way to pick a nominee.

  16. I hope they do. That would accomplish two things:

    1. Choose better candidates.

    2. Get Democratic voters used to the idea of ranked-choice voting to later help push it for general elections.

  17. I assume every state primary/caucus would have to make the switch individually. Or is there a way to do it in one fell swoop?

  18. Ranked choice voting is only good if the elimination in each round is done by least rankings in any position, otherwise you’ll end up with broad coalition candidates getting knocked out in favor of candidates that can’t win because people thought they were unsupportable and left them unranked and then people don’t get what they want. More first place rankings doesn’t mean they have broad approval or a winning coalition.

    If you had everyone ranking someone second place, and a plurality ranking someone else first but everyone else won’t support them under any circumstances, it’s the latter that should be eliminated.

  20. This is a great move. 

    I believe if the Dems do this for primaries, they will end up with candidates more likely to win the general. Plus it will build support for RCV.

  21. anytime you see a politician that’s pro-RCV, do whatever you can to help them win, it’s the clearest sign they actually care about democracy.

  22. Good. Still voting against the Republicans as anybody with a functioning brain should be at this point.

  23. It needs to be ranked choice, run all at once, and remove any form of delegate pledging from candidates that drop. Early run states and candidate drop outs have too much influence. 

  24. Being against ranked choice voting is a particularly wild thing to me, you’re telling me we developed a way to make a vote genuinely matter more and someone’s mad? Pathetic.

  25. This is great except that it’ll never make a difference. The way these primaries have worked the last few cycles, the big glut of candidates happens the year before the election, with most of them dropping out before the first election actually happens.

    Then, it seems, after the third race we get all those “it’s time to stop messing around and consolidate around this terrible centrist candidate” which means the majority of us never get to have a say regardless.

    That said, I love the idea of ranked choice

  28. They need to start getting serious about establishing a presence for an opposition party. The IS political structure has been compromised by republicans with very little effort from Democrats to fight back

  29. I think this is a great idea. While RCV is a well-liked idea, the general public doesn’t understand it.

    We need ways to introduce it and this would be a great start.

    Hopefully the DNC goes with it. Some of the complaints in the article by DNC members are weak, like longer poll times (it’s a primary lol)

  31. I can’t think of many primaries where I was torn between multiple candidates. It’s rare we have that many quality “oh they can win” candidates

  32. Australian here, ranked choice (along with compulsory voting), are two things we cherish in our democracy . It allows us to vote for who we want to instead of voting strategically to keep the “other guys” out. There’s a place for moderate and extreme parties to coexist with compromise often necessary. It’s having the full Baskin Robins cabinet to choose from instead of just chocolate or strawberry.

  33. Republicans and Democrats recognize that it can reduce their power in favor of third parties. Its why American citizens should want it and the political machine should hate it

  34. Will be interesting to see how they desperately try to change things once a progressive starts winning again

  35. Can’t wait to see what _they_ tell the gullible right to convince them that an objectively better system is communism or some nonsense.

  36. Honestly, if Jamie Raskin says it’s the way to go then it’s the way. He’s probably the most intelligent statesperson in DC.

  37. I live in a blue state. Last election we voted on using ranked choice voting. It failed hard. I was surprised since I thought it was a no brainer. 

  39. Did they not learn anything from trying to do the right thing with regards to gerrymandering?

  41. Missourians were duped into believing it was evil in the last election. But we also voted for some labor benefits and the governor said, “No… you don’t want that” and vetoed the will of the people.

    I am really tired of this state…

  42. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of news about an internal reform of the Dems that would be more well received.

  43. Cool. Massachusetts failed to pass it so I have little hope. People are so dumb

  45. We need to be absolutely flooded with infomercials about how this actually works, or people will be lied to by both of the major parties, who have so much to lose, and it won’t work at all.

  47. If we used ranked choice voting in primaries Trump would never had been the Republican nominee in 2016.

  48. Ranked Choice voting could really help democrats nominate popular leaders instead of corporate “GOP-Lite” candidates.

    Thus, they’ll never allow it.

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