The Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted on Aug. 15 to reject a rule proposed by its Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) that would have limited the use of ranked-choice voting for delegate allocation in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary.

The proposed rule, which the RBC passed at its May meeting, said that ranked-choice voting could not be used to express presidential preferences in the delegate allocation process, and if it was used pursuant to state law, only the first-preference votes would be used for delegate allocation.

Since the rule was not adopted by a vote of the full DNC, the delegate allocation process for the 2028 Democratic presidential primary will follow the same rules the party used in 2024, which required states to assign delegates to presidential candidates in proportion to the percentage of votes they receive in a primary, as long as a candidate receives 15% of the vote. Candidates who receive less than 15% of the vote are not awarded delegates. 

According to Independent Voter News, under the 2024 DNC rules, if a state uses ranked-choice voting and no candidate reaches 15% of the vote, the lowest candidate is eliminated. Their votes are redistributed to second-preference candidates, and the process repeats until only candidates with 15% of the vote remain, at which point delegates are allocated proportionally.

The proposed rule would havechanged the process so that only first-preference votes were counted when determining delegate allocation, meaning only candidates receiving 15% or more of the first-preference vote would have received delegates allocated proportionally.

Following the proposal of the RBC rule, members of the D.C. Democratic State Committee wrote an open letter calling on the DNC to vote against adopting the rule. 

They wrote: "Where the ban will have an impact is in disenfranchising voters. DC law requires use of ranked ballots, and the proposed rule simply refuses to count those ballots correctly. Thus, many voters may unknowingly waste their vote by ranking a longshot candidate first – and expecting their vote to transfer to a more viable candidate – but it won’t. As such, the rule as it stands will confuse and disenfranchise voters during the 2028 primaries."

In response to criticism about the proposed rule change, DNC RBC co-chair Jim Roosevelt issued the following statement: "Ranked Choice Voting is incompatible with the party’s delegate allocation process at this time, since RCV is a winner-take-all system while the DNC uses proportional delegate allocation. However, the Rules and Bylaws Committee respects the right of every state to make their own decisions on important voting procedures, which is why the rules include clear guidance for states with statutory requirements like Maine."

Seven states have laws authorizing or requiring the use of ranked-choice voting for certain elections, three of which use ranked-choice voting for some statewide elections.Nineteen states have laws prohibiting or restricting the use of ranked-choice voting.

Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada, and Wyoming used ranked-choice voting in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Maine was the only state that used ranked-choice voting in the 2024 presidential primaries.

Two jurisdictions currently have state or local laws requiring the use of ranked-choice voting in presidential primaries: Maine, which instituted ranked-choice voting in presidential primaries by law in 2020, and Washington, D.C., which instituted ranked-choice voting in presidential primaries by ballot measure in 2024.