An act relating to ranked-choice voting for presidential primary elections
H.313 would create a temporary Ranked-Choice Voting Study Committee to examine how ranked-choice voting could be implemented in Vermont for all state and federal elections, with a report due by January 15, 2026 and the committee ending in November 2026. The committee would include legislators, election officials, municipal clerks, and election-administration experts, and would study voter education, staff training, ballot transport, election security, tabulators and software, canvassing, and post-election reporting. The stated goal is to develop recommendations that could be implemented for all primary and general elections by 2028.
The bill also directly changes Vermont law to require ranked-choice voting for presidential primary elections for each major political party. It sets up ranked-choice ballots, defines key terms, and establishes how ballots are tabulated in rounds, including elimination and vote transfer procedures, tie-breaking by lot, and separate rules for winner-take-all and proportional delegate allocation depending on party notice. It also requires public reporting of round-by-round and ballot-level results in machine-readable formats, directs the Secretary of State to adopt implementing rules, and requires election forms and tally sheets to be updated to record ranked-choice results by January 1, 2028.
The bill would amend Vermont election statutes in Title 17 by redesignating and revising the presidential primary subchapter, adding new ranked-choice voting procedures, and authorizing rulemaking by the Secretary of State for administration, recounts, and reporting. It would affect the Secretary of State, political parties, town clerks, canvassing committees, election staff, and voting-system vendors by requiring ballot design changes, tabulator/software compatibility, updated election forms, and new reporting and certification practices. It also creates a small appropriation for committee expenses and establishes a study process that could lead to broader ranked-choice voting implementation in future elections.
Based on the bill text and the absence of recorded committee testimony or votes, the overall tone appears exploratory and reform-oriented rather than adversarial. The proposal frames ranked-choice voting as a system to be studied carefully before broader adoption, while still moving ahead with a concrete change for presidential primaries. The inclusion of a bipartisan study committee and detailed implementation safeguards suggests an effort to build administrative and political confidence around the proposal.
The main points of potential contention are the complexity and cost of implementing ranked-choice voting, especially for election administration, tabulator compatibility, voter education, and training of local officials. The bill anticipates these concerns by directing study of security, transportation of ballots, software and hardware requirements, canvassing, recount procedures, and uniform ranking limits. Another likely area of debate is the interaction between state-administered ranked-choice tabulation and each party’s own delegate-allocation rules, since the bill preserves party autonomy while also setting default rules if a party does not provide notice.