Instant-runoff voting in the United States

Instant-runoff voting (IRV) has been adopted since 2002 in a number of U.S. cities, with some of these adoptions pending implementation. IRV is now used for local elections in San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Berkeley, California; San Leandro, California; Takoma Park, Maryland; Basalt, Colorado; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Telluride, Colorado; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Portland, Maine. Starting in 2018, Maine will become the first state to use instant-runoff voting for elections for governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and state legislature.

First used in the United States in 1912, IRV has been passed in additional jurisdictions. This article lists the cities in the order of year adopted, the status of implementation, and the results of elections held.

In the United States, IRV election laws were first adopted in 1912. Five states (Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) used versions of IRV for party primaries. Of the states with IRV, only the Minnesota and Maryland laws used the standard IRV sequential elimination of bottom candidates, while the others used batch elimination of all but the top two candidates.

After a series of primary elections in which alternate preference votes happened to play no role in determining the winner, this voting procedure was eclipsed in all five states.

By the 1930s, these instant runoff voting systems had been replaced by other primary election reforms, including the use of a second, or runoff primary in the event of a non-majority outcome.

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