Ways To Vote

Ranking things is easy to do on paper and surprisingly awkward on a screen. Different people reach for different tools: some want to see the whole grid at once, some want to drag the list into order, some just want to number them. RCV Lab offers four ways to fill in the same ballot, and a voter can use whichever suits them — or several, switching freely, because underneath there is only one ranking.

Try it. Rank a few of these and watch every widget follow along.

Four ways to say the same thing

Bubble grid. Candidates down the side, ranks across the top, one bubble per combination — the layout most closely matching a paper RCV ballot as used in the United States. It's the best view for seeing your whole ballot at a glance, and the fastest for correcting one rank without disturbing the rest.

Dropdown selection. One dropdown per rank: pick your 1st choice, then your 2nd. Compact, unambiguous, and a familiar control on the web, which makes it a safe default.

Ranked list. Drag the options into the order you want. This is the most natural fit for the mental model of "put these in order," and the quickest way to rank a full field. It's fully keyboard-operable too — the list can be reordered without a mouse.

Rank by number. Select a number beside each option. The most practical choice on a small screen or with a long list of candidates. Similar to paper ranked choice ballots as used in Australia, Scotland, Ireland and several other countries, where the voter writes in the rank number by hand.

One ballot underneath

The widgets are views, not separate ballots. Choose a 1st choice in the bubble grid, switch to the ranked list, and it's already there. Nothing is lost by changing your mind about how you want to vote halfway through, which means a voter who finds one control confusing can simply use another instead of starting over.

That also means the organizer's choice of widgets is about what to offer, not about what a ballot can express — every widget can produce any valid ballot.

When ranking one thing moves another

Some gestures unavoidably affect options you didn't touch. Drop a candidate into a rank that's already occupied, or drag one up the list, and something else has to shift.

When that happens, the ballot says so: a short notice appears beside the widget naming what moved, with an Undo that puts everything back. It doesn't interrupt with a popup, and there's no dialog to dismiss — the change already happened, and you can reverse it in one click if it wasn't what you meant.

This exists because "I moved one candidate and a different one changed" is the moment voters conclude the ballot is broken. It isn't; it's just crowded. But silence about it is what makes people distrust the ballot.

Equal ranking works everywhere

If the election allows voters to give several options the same rank, every widget supports it — share a column in the bubble grid, or give two options the same number. The ballot's weight is split evenly among the options sharing that rank. It's off unless the organizer turns it on; see Equal Ranking for what it does to the count.

Choosing what your voters see

By default all four are available and voters pick. You can narrow that to a single widget if a uniform ballot matters to you — for an in-person event where you'll explain one control from the front of the room, say — or offer two and let people choose.

A note on narrow screens: the bubble grid needs a certain width to stay legible, so on small phones it steps aside in favor of the widgets that work well there. Voters are never left without a way to vote.