The Power of Ranked Choice Voting at the
3rd Annual Juneteenth Family Reunion
Last month, Voter Choice Arizona sponsored 2 food competitions at BlackNet’s 3rd Annual Juneteenth Family Reunion. In each competition, 5 competing restaurants provided 100 participants with a sample of their entries. The first competition centered around Banana Cream Pudding. The second was focused on chicken wings. Each competition included a trophy and bragging rights for the next year. With so many options, how can a crowd choose the best of the best of Phoenix and ensure that the winner had the support of a majority of the participants? Ranked Choice Voting, of course!
Included below, are the results of each election, with non-winning competitor’s names redacted.
Interactive Breakdown- Banana Cream Pudding Competition
The first competition was pretty contentious to start, the choice tallies ended with nobody taking a majority, but we saw two early front-runners with Sharkie’s edging out the next top competitor with only a single vote lead. That would be the end of the competition under plurality, or first-past-the-post competitions, but could you really call 37% of the vote a crowd favorite? With Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) a winner isn’t decided until a competitor earns a majority of the votes. In our Banana Cream Pudding competition, participants whose 1st choices couldn’t win had their votes transferred to their second, third, and fourth choices so their voice still mattered, and helped to determine a winner that appealed to the majority, despite having a competitive field of many choices. Sharkie’s not only started strong, but built on their lead with every successive round, until they won with a resounding 57% of votes!
That’s a REAL CHAMPION! Congratulations Sharkie’s Banana Pudding!
Imagine if next time you voted for city council, state representative or governor the winner campaigned not only to be ranked 1st on some ballots, but to build towards a majority. They would want to grow a coalition of their constituents to ensure that they were ranked as highly as possible by the largest number of voters. That doesn’t just allow for more competition and change what campaigning looks like, but it increases accountability from a small faction of a single competitor’s base to a larger, more diverse majority of those voting.
This means that even when a RCV achieves similar election outcomes, the incentives for the candidates and ultimately for an elected official can be dramatically different.
Interactive Breakdown- Chicken Wing Competition
In some contests, someone has overwhelming support from the start and tallying voters’ backup choices isn’t necessary to determine a winner. In the chicken wing competition, our 2026 Wing King- ATL Wings– Roosevelt Row won outright with 55% of the votes in the first round!
However, since participants voted with ranked choice ballots, we can see not just how broad their support was, but deep as well, with ATL Wings building upon their lead each round. So while ATL was the favorite pick for 55% of the crowd, they were also a top-4 pick for two-thirds of the audience.
Congratulations to All The Luv Wings- Roosevelt Row!
As we look back on the 3rd Annual Juneteenth Family Reunion, it’s clear that when we provide opportunities for every voice to be heard, whether in a community food competition or in the voting booth, the wins are so much more satisfying. By incorporating upgrades like ranked choice voting we aren’t just choosing a winner, but aligning incentives between the candidates and the voters. Thank you to our volunteers, our wonderful competitors, and to everyone that weighed in on their favorite entries.
Learn more on our site and get engaged to bring the RCV upgrade to elections near you.
Kazz Fernandes
Executive Director
Voter Choice Arizona
