Filling Out Your Ballot
Charlottesville is using ranked choice voting in the Democratic primary for City Council on June 17, 2025. This page addresses common questions about the candidates and ballot.
The Candidates
Charlottesville voters will elect candidates for local and statewide offices in 2025. The June 17 election is a Democratic Primary. The Charlottesville Democratic Party requested a ranked choice primary and City Council granted the request with guidance from the City Registrar and Electoral Board.
City Council is the only office that is using ranked choice voting. There are three candidates running for two open seats: Juandiego Wade, Brian Pinkston, and Jen Fleisher.
Voters will use traditional, single-choice voting to select the nominees for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General.
The Ballot
The ballot has two sides:
- The front side has traditional, single-choice races for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General.
- The back side, has ranked choice voting for City Council.
In a ranked choice election, you don't just vote for one candidate. You get to rank the candidates in the order that you like them. Each candidate appears on a row and the rankings 1, 2, and 3 appear on the columns.
- Mark column 1 for your 1st choice — that's your favorite candidate.
- Mark column 2 for your 2nd choice.
- Mark column 3 for your 3rd choice — the candidate you like least.
Mark one box in each column. You can only use each ranking once.
See all the ways to rank all the candidates.
Do I have to rank all the candidates?
No, you don't have to rank all the candidates. You should rank one candidate as your 1st choice. After that, you can rank the other candidates if you want.
Ranking a 2nd choice won't hurt your favorite candidate. Your 2nd choice will only be counted after your favorite candidate has enough votes to win. Ranking all the candidates ensures you use the full power of your vote to fill both seats on City Council.
Learn more about how ranked choice votes are counted.
Can I rank more than one candidate 1st?
No, you can only mark one 1st choice.
If you like two candidates, rank your favorite candidate 1st and the other one 2nd.
Can I rank the same candidate more than once?
No, you can only rank each candidate once.
Mark column 1 for your favorite candidate and rank another candidate in column 2. You can't help your favorite candidate by ranking that person more than once.
What happens if I make a mistake?
Don't worry. If you make a mistake while filling out your ballot at your polling location, ask a poll worker for help. They can issue you a new ballot and destroy the old one.
The ballot scanner at your polling place will also catch mistakes. For instance, if you accidentally mark two candidates as your 1st choice, the scanner will detect the error and reject the ballot so you can correct the mistake with the help of a poll worker.
If you vote by mail, double check your ballot for errors before sealing it in the provided envelope. You won't be present when the ballot is scanned to correct any mistakes.
Ballots rejected for errors are very rare. In Arlington's last ranked choice election, just 220 ballots out of nearly 130,000 total (<0.002%) contained errors and could not be counted.
Every eligible voter should have their vote count, so be sure to submit a valid ballot with one rank per candidate.
