When ranked choice voting (RCV) is being proposed in jurisdictions across the country, one of the questions that is frequently asked is, “Will this hurt how elections are run?” This is a valid question for any electoral reform. Existing research primarily focuses on RCV’s impact on cost savings by combining elections. A new paper uses data to analyze whether adopting RCV impacts the day-to-day processes of election administration in jurisdictions that have already adopted it.

Results indicate that counties that implement RCV (or include cities that have adopted RCV) do consistently better or are on par with the national average in terms of election administration. After jurisdictions adopt RCV, their county election administration scores improve compared to their starting place. Generally, the act of adopting and implementing RCV may have a spillover effect of improving how well local governments conduct elections.