On March 17, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed a bill making Ohio the 19th state to ban ranked-choice voting (RCV). Ohio is the second state to enact a prohibition on RCV this year, after Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) signed a ban in February. In 2025, six states enacted legislation prohibiting RCV. Six states also passed laws banning RCV in 2024.

Ohio’s law states, “Except as otherwise permitted under Article X or Article XVIII, Ohio Constitution, no election shall be conducted in this state using ranked choice voting or instant runoff voting.”

Under a 1951 Ohio Supreme Court ruling, municipalities are allowed to adopt RCV under constitutional home rule provisions. The new law prevents municipalities that adopt RCV from receiving any local government fund distributions from the state.

On Feb. 25, the Ohio House of Representatives approved the RCV prohibition 65-27, with 63 Republicans and two Democrats voting in favor and 27 Democrats voting against. On March 3, the Senate passed the bill 24-7, with 23 Republicans and one Democrat voting in favor and seven Democrats voting against.

Speaking on the floor of the Ohio House, Rep. Sharon Ray (R) said, “While some voting machines might be able to accept the software update needed to tabulate grant choice voting, the update would be significant and costly. Boards of elections that have older machines would most likely have to be replaced.”

In a Feb. 17 committee hearing, Common Cause Ohio associate director Mia Lewis said, “This bill is not just about prohibiting a rank choice voting system from state elections; it prohibits them in some cases and provides significant disincentives in other cases, even in supposedly ‘home rule’ entities. Why dissuade local governments from exploring a system of voting that may work better for their communities?”

Seventeen of the 19 states that prohibit RCV had Republican trifectas at the time the prohibition was enacted, including Ohio. The other two states — Kansas and Kentucky — had divided governments, both with Democratic governors and Republican majorities in both legislative chambers.

Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine use RCV for at least some statewide elections. At the time those states approved RCV, Alaska and Maine had divided governments, and Hawaii had a Democratic trifecta.

Municipalities in 14 states use RCV for local elections.

So far this year, legislators in 11 states have introduced or carried over from the 2025 session 20 bills to prohibit or repeal RCV. 

Legislators in 20 states have introduced or carried over 43 bills to allow or require RCV. Two of those bills, in Maine and Virginia, have passed at least one chamber of a state legislature.

RCV is a system where voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. In the RCV system most commonly used in the United States, a candidate who wins a majority of first-preference votes is the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. 

Ballots that ranked an eliminated candidate as their first, or highest choice, depending on the round, are then reevaluated and counted as first-preference ballots for the next-highest-ranked candidate in that round. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of ballots. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority.