From the Washington Post:

The race for second place is on.

The seven Republicans running for Virginia governor are making their final appeals to the record 53,000 delegates who’ve signed up to vote in their party’s May 8 nominating convention.

Because it’s a ranked-choice contest that requires a majority to win, ballots will be tallied over and over — meaning when a voter’s first choice is cut, their second choice gets counted.

So it helps to be a bunch of voters’ Plan B.

“Number two wins it,” state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr. (R-Franklin), who made a video for candidate Kirk Cox this week that combined full-throated endorsement — “We need to save Virginia . . . and this is the man that can do the job” — with a more modest ask: “If he’s not your first, please make Kirk Cox your second selection.”