Vermont lawmakers push ranked-choice voting

A tripartisan coalition of lawmakers has introduced a bill for Vermont to adopt ranked-choice voting.

The proposed legislation is modeled after Maine's 2016 law and would adopt ranked-choice voting for primary elections and congressional races.

Ranked-choice voting works like this: Voters rank candidates from first to last on their ballot, and the election is over if one candidate wins a majority. If not, candidates are eliminated one by one and their remaining votes are reallocated until one candidate reaches a majority and wins.

The goal is to eliminate vote-splitting between like-minded candidates and voters in races between more than two candidates.