High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Preferential voting (or preference voting or ranked voting) is a type of ballot structure used in several electoral systems in which voters rank candidates in order of relative preference. For example, the voter may select their first choice as `1`, their second preference a `2`, and so on. This contrasts with ballots used by methods which do not allow more than two-valued ranking of candidates (Yes or No; Yes to one and No to the others), such as plurality voting or approval voting.