Ranked choice
Voters rank the options from favorite to least favorite. If no option has a majority of first choices, the last-place option is out, and its votes move to each voter's next choice. This repeats until one option has a majority.
Why it helps
Ranked choice, also called instant runoff, keeps going until the winner has a majority of the ballots still counting. And you can put a long shot first without wasting your vote: if it's out, your vote moves to your next choice.
Where it's used
Australia elects its House of Representatives this way, and Ireland its president. In the US, Maine became the first state to use it for federal elections, in 2018, and New York City uses it in primaries for city offices. Florida and Tennessee banned it in 2022, and more states have since.
Criticisms
If you rank only a few options and they're all out, your ballot stops counting before the final round. In rare cases, an option can lose because more people ranked it higher, which is as odd as it sounds (the "monotonicity" problem). An option nearly everyone likes can go out first if few people put it first. That's the "center squeeze": see it happen to sushi in the "Everyone's second choice" example. And it's harder to explain, and to count by hand.
On TallyLab
TallyLab asks you to rank every option, so no ballot runs out of choices before the final round.