Press Kit
On June 17, Charlottesville will hold its first election using ranked choice voting. This page addresses common questions from the press.
All the graphics in this press kit are freely available for media use. You are welcome to download, modify, publish, and distribute them without attribution.
If you have any questions not answered here, please be in touch at hello@rankedchoiceva.org. We're eager to assist the media in keeping voters informed ahead of the election.
This page will be updated in June with details about election night reporting.
When is the election?
The primary election is on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Early voting starts Friday, May 2. Voters can learn more about when and where to cast their ballots here.
Who are the candidates?
There are three candidates running for two open seats on Charlottesville City Council. Juandiego Wade and Brian Pinkston are incumbents, and Jen Fleisher is a first-time candidate. All three candidates are Democrats. No Republicans filed to run in this election.
What is ranked choice voting?
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.
The City Council section of the ballot is pictured here. Each candidate appears on a separate row. Voters mark the 1st column for their favorite candidate, the 2nd column for the candidate they like next, and the 3rd column for the candidate they like least.
Please see our Ballot Guide for more information about marking the ballot. It covers the most common questions we hear from City residents as they prepare to vote.
How are ranked choice ballots counted?
Votes Needed To Win
# of winners
share of votes
There are two open seats on City Council this year. In a ranked choice election with two winners, candidates need to earn at least 1/3 of the votes to win a seat.
Why a third? Because only two candidates can each win more than a 1/3 of the votes.
The ballots are counted in rounds until two candidates get enough votes to win.
- In Round 1, the 1st choice votes are counted. If two candidates each get more that 1/3 of the votes, they both win, and the race is over.
- If only one candidate gets enough votes to win in Round 1, the winner's extra votes (above 1/3) go to the voters' 2nd choice candidates in Round 2. The candidate that wins more than 1/3 of the votes in Round 2 wins the second seat.
You can read a detailed example of election results here.
Why is Charlottesville using ranked choice?
Ranked choice voting lets voters express their honest views about all the candidates. A voter can't waste their vote by ranking their favorite candidate first, and voters can support a second candidate without fear of hurting their favorite.
Under Charlottesville's former election system, voters could support two candidates but not express a preference between them, leading many voters to "single shot" or "bullet vote" to avoid hurting their favorite candidate by using their second vote.
The Charlottesville Democratic Party requested a ranked choice primary and City Council granted the request with guidance from the City Registrar and Electoral Board, in keeping with state law. In a memo to Council last August, the City Registrar wrote that "ranked choice voting has been successfully adopted in various localities and states across the nation and has been shown by research to support more diverse candidate pools and improved civility in campaigns and elections".
Where else is ranked choice voting used?
Arlington has used ranked choice voting to elect its County Board since 2023. Outside Virginia, ranked choice voting is used statewide in Maine and Alaska and at the local level in roughly 50 U.S. cities and counties.
