Establishes a system of ranked choice voting whenever a municipality's charter amendment is approved by its voters.

Rhode Island Ranked Choice Voting Bill Summary

This bill would allow cities and towns in Rhode Island to adopt a voting method called ranked choice voting (RCV) for their local elections. Under ranked choice voting, instead of simply picking one candidate, voters rank candidates in order of preference — first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on. If no candidate wins a majority outright, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and those voters' second choices are counted instead. This process repeats until one candidate has a majority.

The key detail of this bill is that a municipality cannot simply decide on its own to switch to ranked choice voting — the community's voters would first need to approve a change to the municipality's charter (the local governing document) through a public vote. Only after that voter approval would ranked choice voting take effect for that community's elections.

This bill primarily affects local governments and voters in Rhode Island cities and towns. It gives communities the option to change how they elect local officials if their residents choose to do so. It does not require any community to adopt ranked choice voting — it simply creates a legal pathway for those that want to.

The bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee and is scheduled for a hearing in April 2026. It has not yet been passed into law.