Maine voters have passed a statewide measure that could benefit third parties and prevent candidates who dont truly have majority support from gaining office.

On Tuesday, Maine became the first state to pass ranked-choice voting, sometimes also called instant-runoff voting, Maine Public Radio reports . Several U.S. cities have implemented ranked-choice voting, but Maine would be the first place to do it statewide, according to Reason .

With traditional voting in the U.S., whichever candidate gets the most votes in a given race wins period. That means that if there are more than two candidates, someone can win office without getting a majority of more than 50 percent of voters . In some cases, a candidate might win even though more than half of voters strongly oppose that person, if their support is split among the candidates opponents.

Ranked-choice voting, on the other hand, allows voters to rank their candidates. To win, a candidate must earn a majority of the votes cast. If, after the first round of counting, no candidate has a majority of votes, the ballots get counted again with one exception: for voters who selected the last-place candidate as their top pick, their votes get counted with their second-choice candidate as their first choice. This continues until someone gets a majority.