Pick one
Plurality. What nearly every U.S. election uses.
Ballot: Mark one candidate.
- How it’s counted
- Most marks wins.
- Rounds
- 1
- What you can say
- One name. Nothing about anyone else.
The whole idea fits on an index card.
Score voting asks one question about every candidate: how much do you want this person in office, from 0 to 10? Then it adds up everyone’s answers. This page walks through filling in a ballot, counting it, and how it stacks up against the other reforms.
The rule
- Give every candidate a score from 0 to 10.
- Skip anyone you don’t know. A blank adds nothing.
- Add up each candidate’s scores. The highest total wins.
That’s the whole system. Everything is counted once.
You have more than one opinion. Your ballot should too.
Here’s a sample ballot for mayor, filled in by one voter. Call that voter you. Five candidates, five separate judgments, and no ranking required.
- 10Gutierrez. The one you want. Full stop.
- 8Park. Strong on the issues you care about, with some reservations.
- 6Thompson. Acceptable. You’d be fine with this one.
- 2Chen. You disagree with this one on most things.
- 0Walsh. “I do not want this person in office.”
- Two candidates can get the same score. If you like them equally, say so.
- Blank is fine. Skip anyone you don’t know enough about to judge.
- You never have to use all eleven bubbles. Give one candidate a 10 and leave the rest blank, and you’ve cast a pick-one ballot.
Sample ballot
Mayor
Score every candidate from 0 to 10. 0 = worst, 10 = best. Skip anyone you don’t know.
“You’ve just expressed more political nuance in one ballot than plurality voting allows in a lifetime.”
Add it up. The highest total wins.
Now four neighbors vote too. Every score on every ballot goes into a single count. Add across each row, and the biggest number wins.
| Candidate | You | Ana | Ben | Cal | Dee | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gutierrez | 10 | 6 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 25 |
| Park | 8 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 6 | 39 |
| Thompson | 6 | 10 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 26 |
| Chen | 2 | 3 | blank | 6 | 5 | 16 |
| Walsh | 0 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 10 | 21 |
Park wins with 39.
Park was the favorite of only one voter, but every voter scored Park 6 or higher. That’s the candidate this group can most stand behind, and the count found it in one pass.
A blank adds nothing.
Ben left Chen blank, so Chen’s total is just the other four scores. Under this rule, leaving someone blank counts the same as a 0.
Same five voters, pick-one rules
If each voter could mark only a favorite, Walsh would win with 2 votes out of 5, even though three of the five scored Walsh a 0 or a 1. The other voters split between candidates they liked. That split is the spoiler effect, in miniature.
That system is eleven bubbles wide.
The range matters. Too few levels and you’re rounding your opinion into crude buckets. Too many and you’re splitting hairs. Eleven levels, 0 through 10, gives you room to say what you mean without making you agonize over it.
2levels
Pick one
Marked or not. One candidate gets everything you think; everyone else gets nothing.
6levels
0 to 5
Too blunt. “I like them” and “I love them” end up a point apart, or on the same bubble.
11levels
0 to 10
The scale you already use for movies and restaurants. Room to tell a 10 from an 8 from a 5.
101levels
0 to 100
More room than anyone needs. Nobody wants to decide whether a candidate is a 73 or a 74.
Why start at zero
A 1 says “almost no support, but not nothing.” Starting at 0 gives you a way to say flat opposition.
“A zero is a statement: ‘I do not want this person in office.’”
Real voters handle it
During the 2012 French presidential election, 2,340 voters cast a second, score-style ballot on scales running all the way up to 0 to 20, and used the in-between grades extensively. The study found something bigger, too: the ballot changed who came out ahead.
“If French voters can grade twenty-one levels on election day, Americans can manage eleven.”
Source: Baujard et al., Electoral Studies 34 (2014)
Every reform beats pick-one. They aren’t equal.
Ranked choice, approval, STAR and score voting are all trying to fix the same broken ballot. Here’s how they differ, as fairly as we can put it.
Ranked choice
RCV, or instant runoff.
Ballot: Rank candidates in order.
- How it’s counted
- If no one has a majority, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots move to their next choice. Repeat.
- Rounds
- 1 or more
- What you can say
- An order of preference, but not how strongly you feel.
- Vote-splitting and spoilers
- Much better than pick-one: a minor candidate’s voters move on instead of being thrown away. But it can eliminate the candidate who beats every rival head-to-head, as in Burlington and Alaska.
Approval
Score voting with two levels.
Ballot: Mark every candidate you approve of.
- How it’s counted
- Most approvals wins.
- Rounds
- 1
- What you can say
- Yes or no on every candidate.
- Vote-splitting and spoilers
- Strong. You can mark your favorite and a compromise, so a similar candidate doesn’t split your vote. Fargo and St. Louis adopted it.
STAR
Score Then Automatic Runoff.
Ballot: Score every candidate.
- How it’s counted
- Add up the scores. The top two go to a runoff, won by the one scored higher on more ballots.
- Rounds
- 2
- What you can say
- How much you support each candidate.
- Vote-splitting and spoilers
- Strong in the scoring step. The runoff adds a second step that can hand the win to the finalist with the lower total.
Score
0 to 10. What this campaign is for.
Ballot: Score every candidate from 0 to 10. Skip anyone you don’t know.
- How it’s counted
- Add up the scores. The highest total wins.
- Rounds
- 1
- What you can say
- How much you support each candidate, on eleven levels.
- Vote-splitting and spoilers
- Strong. Nothing is eliminated or transferred, and a 10 for your favorite takes nothing from the candidate you gave an 8.
Ranked choice: an ally, with flaws
Ranked choice put voting reform on the map. It proved Americans will vote to change how they vote, and the book gives it a chapter of credit.
Its trouble lives in the elimination rounds. In Burlington in 2009 and Alaska in 2022, it cut the candidate who beat every rival head-to-head. That’s rare: it showed up in two of 182 competitive U.S. ranked-choice races from 2004 to 2022. But when it happens, nothing on election night tells you.
Source: Graham-Squire and McCune, “An Examination of Ranked-Choice Voting in the United States, 2004–2022,” Representation 61, no. 1 (2025)
STAR: close, with one step too many
STAR uses a score ballot, then sends the top two to an automatic runoff. It’s expressive and performs well in simulations. The runoff, though, is one more thing to explain, and it can overturn the candidate with the higher total.
If your city is weighing STAR, support it. It’s far better than pick-one. For a new campaign, the simpler rule is the stronger one.
Questions & objections
The hard ones, answered straight. For the five toughest critiques at full length, see the critiques, answered. Still stuck? Ask us.
How does it work, exactly?
You give every candidate a score from 0 to 10. Zero means “I do not want this person in office.” Ten means “this is who I want.” You can give the same score to more than one person, and you can leave anyone blank.
Then the scores are added up. The candidate with the highest total wins. One round, no eliminations, no runoff.
Isn’t this just ranked-choice voting?
No. Ranked choice asks you to put candidates in order, then eliminates them one round at a time. Score voting asks how much you support each candidate on their own, and counts everything at once.
Ranked choice is a real improvement over pick-one, and the book gives it a chapter of credit. But in Burlington, Vermont (2009) and Alaska (2022), it eliminated the candidate who beat every rival head-to-head. Scoring everyone in a single count avoids that trap.
Does it help one party?
No, and the record cuts both ways. A spoiler split the right in 1912 and the left in 2000. In Alaska in 2022, ranked choice eliminated Republican Nick Begich even though he beat both finalists head-to-head; in Burlington in 2009, it eliminated Democrat Andy Montroll, who also beat both finalists.
Better counting finds the candidate the most voters can stand behind, whatever their party. As the book puts it: the spoiler effect has no party.
Won’t people just give 10s and 0s?
Some will, and that’s fine. Every voting method can be gamed. Under score voting the “gaming” move is to give only 10s and 0s, which turns your ballot into an approval ballot: still far better than picking one.
What you never have to do is rate your favorite below anyone to protect yourself. Plurality forces that choice on millions of voters every election.
Isn’t eleven bubbles too complicated?
You already rate restaurants, movies, and rideshares. Olympic judges and film juries score. In a 2012 field experiment, French voters used ballots with up to twenty-one levels on presidential election day, and used the in-between grades extensively.
And you never have to use all eleven. If you only want to mark one candidate a 10, you can.
Has it been used in real elections?
Its simplest form has. Approval voting is score voting with only two levels. Voters adopted it in Fargo, North Dakota (2018, 63.5%) and St. Louis, Missouri (2020, 68%). St. Louis still uses it; Fargo used it three times before North Dakota’s legislature banned it in 2025.
Full 0–10 score voting isn’t used in any U.S. government election yet. That’s what this campaign is for.
How does this actually get adopted?
From the ground up. Start where no law stands in the way: clubs, unions, student governments, party conventions, nonprofits. Next come cities with citizen initiatives, which is how Fargo and St. Louis did it.
Be clear-eyed: many states now restrict alternative voting methods, so check your state’s law before you organize. The last three chapters of the book are the playbook.
Who’s behind this?
Score the Vote is a project of Super Citizen, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, started by Chris Borgia, the author of the book. We’re nonpartisan: we don’t endorse candidates or parties. Book sales and donations fund the work.
Now score a race of your own.
Put the names from your next ballot on ours and see what you’d actually say. Then read the whole case. It takes about an hour.