Newport News Mayor Philip Jones endorses expansion of ranked choice voting

On Saturday, Newport News Mayor Philip Jones published an op-ed asking the Virginia legislature to let localities use ranked choice voting (RCV) in all local elections. Currently, Virginia law permits localities to use RCV for city council and county board elections – but not mayoral ones.

Mayor Jones highlighted RCV as a solution to the “vote-splitting” problem, where candidates in single-choice elections may win without majority support if more than two people run. He cited several recent elections where RCV would have been beneficial, saying: 

Richmond, Roanoke, Winchester, and Virginia Beach all elected mayors this year in wide-field races with a winner who earned less than half the votes. In my own four-way race for Mayor of Newport News in 2022, I won with 40% of the votes, which means nearly 60% of the voters supported someone else.

RCV ensures winning candidates receive over 50% of the vote, providing them a clear mandate to govern. Additionally, voters no longer feel a need to vote “strategically” instead of for their preferred candidate; if a voter’s top choice can’t win, their vote counts for their next choice! 

Mayor Jones says that with ranked choice voting:

Voters get the freedom to express how they feel about all the options – without fear of wasting their votes – and candidates get rewarded for building coalitions around the issues that matter most, so we all get elected leaders who better reflect the wide range of people they serve.

Mayor Jones’ endorsement comes on the heels of the successful use of RCV in Arlington, where the reform has been adopted permanently for primaries and was just piloted in the 2024 general election; and a recent adoption in Charlottesville for its 2025 election. For more information on the effort to expand RCV’s use in Virginia, check out UpVote Virginia and Ranked Choice Virginia.

December 2024 update: Since this post was published, Fairfax Mayor Catherine Read called for her city to adopt ranked choice voting, showing that momentum for RCV continues to grow in Virginia.