How ranked choice voting works in Boulder, and how to make your ballot count

Here is the thing almost nobody realizes until the ballot is already on the kitchen table: this November, Boulder is going to ask you to vote two different ways on the same envelope. The mayor's race uses ranked choice voting. The five City Council seats do not. They are counted the old, familiar way, and the rules for making your vote land are genuinely different in each.

I am running for one of those council seats, so I have skin in this game and I will say so plainly as we go. But the mechanics below are not partisan, and understanding them makes you a sharper voter no matter whom you support. So let's walk through the nuts and bolts.

What ranked choice voting actually is

Ranked choice voting (you'll also see it called instant runoff voting) lets you rank the candidates in order of preference instead of picking just one. First choice, second choice, third choice, and so on down the list, for as many as you care to rank.

The point is to solve an old problem. In a normal race with several candidates, someone can win with 35% of the vote while 65% of the city wanted somebody else, just because the opposition split its vote. Ranked choice makes sure the winner is someone a real majority can live with, by letting your vote move to your next choice if your first choice can't win.

In Boulder, this applies to exactly one race: mayor. Voters adopted it back in 2020, used it for the first time in 2023, and 2026 will be the second time around. It does not apply to the council seats. That distinction trips up a lot of smart people, so if you take one thing from this piece, take that.

How the mayor's race gets counted

The counting happens in rounds, and it is more intuitive than it sounds:

• First, every ballot's first choice is counted. If a candidate has more than half the first-choice votes, that's it, they win outright.
• If nobody clears 50%, the candidate in last place is eliminated. Every ballot that ranked that person first now moves to its next ranked choice who is still in the running.
• The votes are counted again. Still no majority? The new last-place candidate is eliminated, those ballots move to their next choice, and so on.
• This repeats until one candidate crosses 50% and wins.

Thus a vote for a candidate who gets eliminated isn't wasted. It just transfers to whoever you liked next, and keeps working for you round after round.

Ranking a backup can never hurt your first choice. Your second choice is only ever counted after your first choice is out of the race.

That last point is the one people worry about, so let me be blunt about it. You cannot hurt your favorite candidate by adding a second or third choice behind them. The system only ever looks at your second choice once your first is eliminated, at which point your first choice is beyond helping anyway. There is no strategy in which pretending you don't have a backup makes your top pick more likely to win.

How to make your mayoral vote count for the most

Given all that, two simple habits get you the most out of a ranked ballot:

• Rank your true first choice first. No games, no "electability" math. Put the person you actually want at the top. That's what the first round counts, and it's the strongest signal you can send.
• Rank deep, not shallow. Fill in a second, third, and fourth choice for anyone you'd genuinely accept. A ballot that ranks only one candidate simply drops out of the count if that candidate is eliminated. Ranking several keeps your voice in the room all the way to the final round, where the actual decision gets made.

The council race plays by different rules

Now the part that matters most to me, and the part that catches people off guard. Boulder's City Council is elected at-large, meaning every member represents the whole city rather than a district. This November there are five council seats open, four of which are for a four-year term and one to complete the remaining two years of Mark Wallach, who recently resigned mid-term.

There is no ranking here. Instead, you get to vote for up to five candidates, and the five candidates with the highest vote totals win. Every mark is a full, equal vote. You can vote for five people, or three, or two, or just one. That choice, how many of your five votes you actually use, is where a little strategy comes in.

How to make your council votes count for the most

Here's the counterintuitive truth about a vote-for-five race, and I'll disclose again that I'm one of the names on that part of the ballot. Because the top five finishers win, every candidate you vote for is competing against every other candidate for those same five chairs. When you fill in a name, you are helping that person finish ahead of the others, including the others you also voted for.

So the way to increase the odds that a specific candidate gets seated depends on how strongly you feel:

• If there are five people you'd be genuinely glad to see on council, vote for all five. You have five votes; use them, and shape the whole slate. There's no penalty for a full ballot when you like the full slate.
• If your heart is really with one or two candidates, consider voting for only those one or two. This is sometimes called a single-shot or "bullet" vote. By not spending your other votes on their rivals, you avoid helping someone edge your favorite out of fifth place. The tradeoff is real: you're giving up your say on the rest of the council to protect the candidate you care about most.

Neither approach is a trick, and neither is the "right" answer for everyone. It comes down to a simple question: are you trying to build a whole council you like, or to make sure one particular person gets a seat? Vote accordingly, and know that on the council side, every extra name you add is a vote that could help beat the candidate you started out wanting.

The short version

Two systems, one envelope. For mayor, rank sincerely and rank deep, because a backup never costs you anything and an unranked ballot goes quiet early. For council, decide whether you're voting for a slate or for a single champion, and spend your five votes to match. That's it.

Boulder mails ballots on October 9 and Election Day is November 3. If you're not sure you're registered, that takes about ninety seconds to fix, and you can check or update your registration here. If you want to know where I stand on the choices in front of the next council, that's what the rest of this site is for, starting with the issues in detail.