Faster, Cheaper, Better Special Elections for San Jose
Updated: 2 days ago
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San Jose has a real opportunity in front of it. On June 23, 2026, the City Council voted 8-2 to put ranked choice voting for special elections before voters in March 2028. Now it is up to San Jose voters, and the case for voting yes is about as strong as a reform case gets. Cheaper elections. Faster results. A majority winner every time. Better representation for the communities that get squeezed out by vote splitting. Strong support from across the political spectrum in the polling.
San Jose is California's third-largest city, in a county where the public approved RCV back in 1998. Bringing ranked choice voting to San Jose for special elections would be a substantial win, and it puts the city on a path toward eventually using RCV for regular Council and mayoral elections too, which is what residents have already said they want. In 2021, San Jose's own Charter Review Commission, the first in 35 years, recommended ranked choice voting for city elections. Read the Commission's final report; the RCV recommendation starts on page 38 of the PDF.
Here's what's on the table, what it would do, and what San Jose residents can do to make sure it passes in March 2028.
The Opportunity
In March 2028, San Jose voters will decide on a charter amendment that authorizes the city to use ranked choice voting for special elections to fill City Council vacancies. It mandates nothing. It gives the Council a third option alongside appointment and the existing two-round runoff.
Today, when a Council seat becomes vacant between regular elections, San Jose holds a special election. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the city has to run a second election, a runoff election between the top two finishers, weeks or months after the first one. That costs money, takes time, and often brings out fewer voters than the first round.
Ranked choice voting, sometimes called instant runoff voting, replaces that two-step process with one election. Voters rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third, and so on. If no one wins a majority of first choices, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots are counted for their next ranked choice. The process repeats until one candidate has a majority. One election, one winner with majority support, no second trip to the polls.
That's it. Same ballot box, same day, same voters, just a smarter way to count.
What Problems Does This Address?
Ranked choice voting saves San Jose taxpayers $1.5 million every time a special election would have gone to a runoff. In 2025, the District 3 special election went to a runoff after the first round didn't produce a majority winner. The first round cost the city around $2.1 million. The runoff cost another $1.5 million. Ranked choice voting would have settled the contest in the first round and saved the city that entire second bill.
And special elections in San Jose nearly always need a runoff. Since 2000, there have been six special elections to fill vacancies in San Jose, and five of them went to a runoff. Special elections almost always have large fields of candidates, because there's no incumbent, and large fields almost never produce a majority winner in a single round.
That makes the savings predictable. The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters estimates the incremental cost of running a ranked choice election for a single Council district at about $330,000, mostly for voter education and ballot printing. Compared to $1.5 million for a runoff, that's well over a million dollars in net savings per special election. A citywide ranked choice voting special election to fill a mayoral vacancy would save substantially more.
Ranked choice voting produces winners chosen by more voters. Runoff elections often draw fewer voters than the first round, sometimes dramatically fewer. The decisive election, the one that actually picks the officeholder, ends up being decided by a smaller, less representative slice of the district. Ranked choice voting fixes that by making the first and only election the decisive one, with the full field of candidates on the ballot at the moment turnout is highest.
Ranked choice voting expands representation for communities of color. This is the part that matters most. When a special election draws a crowded field, candidates from the same community, the same neighborhood, the same coalition, can end up splitting the vote among themselves. A district that's overwhelmingly Asian American, Latino, or working-class can end up with a runoff between two candidates none of those communities prefer, simply because their preferred candidates split the first-round vote and got knocked out.
Ranked choice voting solves this directly. Voters can support their first choice without worrying about throwing their vote away, because if their first choice doesn't make it, their ballot counts for their next choice. Candidates from similar coalitions can cross-endorse each other and campaign cooperatively instead of attacking each other. The results back it up: in California cities that have used ranked choice voting, candidates of color have won 64% of races, compared to 36% in the same cities before ranked choice voting. Women have won 44% of races, a ten-point increase.
Ranked choice voting produces winners with broad support. When a candidate wins with 31 percent of the vote in a seven-way race, or makes a runoff because the rest of the field split their support, residents are right to wonder whether the result reflects what the district actually wanted. Ranked choice voting produces winners with broad support, every time. An average of 73% of voters rank winning candidates in their top three choices, meaning winners have affirmative support from roughly three-quarters of their constituents. That's a more legitimate result, and a more durable one.
Why Single-Election RCV Is the Right Fit for Local Races
For a single-seat local race, ranked choice voting is the right answer. One election. Full field. A majority winner. The work the two-round runoff was trying to do, ensuring the winner has majority support and giving voters a real choice when no one has it on the first ballot, all of it gets done in a single round, at lower cost, with higher turnout in the decisive election.
California has been demonstrating this for more than twenty years. Ranked choice voting was first used in California in 2004 in San Francisco. Since then, it has expanded to Albany, Berkeley, Eureka, Oakland, Redondo Beach, and San Leandro. Two decades in, the evidence is in: ranked choice voting has saved California cities $5 million per election cycle, increased participation in decisive elections, and produced more representative outcomes. Voter satisfaction in Bay Area cities that use RCV runs from 70% in San Leandro to 84% in Berkeley. 92% of voters in these cities say they understand ranked choice voting well, which is higher than the share who say they understand California's top-two primary.
The county is moving in the same direction. Santa Clara County voters approved ranked choice voting in 1998 with Measure F, amending the county charter to permit an "instant run-off voting system… when such technology is available." That technology now exists. The voting equipment already supports ranked choice voting. It's the same software used in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Albany and San Leandro.
San Jose voters are ready. In late 2023, an EMC Research poll of San Jose voters found 63% strongly or somewhat support using ranked choice voting for City Council and mayoral elections, with 35% opposed. A net 28-point margin. Support held across demographic groups and was particularly strong among Asian American and Latino voters, the communities most affected by vote splitting. A yes vote reflects what San Jose residents already want.
Known Obstacles, and Why They're Surmountable
Voter education is the work, and it pays off. Voters who haven't ranked candidates before need a clear explanation of how it works. Every successful ranked choice voting rollout, in California cities, in Maine, in Alaska, in roughly 50 jurisdictions nationally, has paired the change with a serious public education effort. The $330,000 implementation cost cited above includes that voter outreach. It's built into the budget.
The reassuring part: voters figure it out fast, and they love it once they've used it. 92% of voters in Bay Area RCV cities say they understand the system well. 70% want to keep using it. And 42% want to expand it to additional elections like statewide and federal offices. That last number is the one to sit with. Once voters experience ranked choice voting, a large share of them want more of it.
The measure pays for itself the first time it's used. The Council placed it on the regularly scheduled March 2028 primary ballot to keep costs down. San Jose has held six special elections since 2000, and five went to a runoff. Vacancies will keep coming, and the first special election held with RCV recovers the cost and then some.
The equity-based critiques don't hold up. Some opponents have argued that ranked choice voting disadvantages lower-income and more diverse precincts, pointing to higher ballot error rates in those precincts in RCV cities. The argument doesn't survive scrutiny: those same precincts have higher error rates in every kind of election, ranked or not. The honest interpretation is that those communities need more investment in voter outreach across the board. The actual data on RCV outcomes points the other way: ranked choice voting has expanded representation for Asian American and Latino candidates in the California cities that have adopted it.
What Success Looks Like
Picture the next San Jose special election under ranked choice voting. A Council seat opens. Voters get a single ballot with the full field of candidates and rank as many or as few as they want. The count produces a majority winner. No second campaign. No second taxpayer bill. The community's actual preferences, including the preferences of voters whose first choices didn't make the final round, all show up in the result.
San Jose residents would join a generation of California voters who use ranked choice voting and report high satisfaction with it. The city would join the column of California RCV cities that have demonstrated the reform's benefits. And the conversation about bringing ranked choice voting to regular Council and mayoral elections, which 63% of San Jose voters already support, would have a foundation under it. Voters who've used ranked choice voting and seen it work tend to want more of it. That's been the consistent pattern, in every California city that's adopted RCV.
What San Jose Residents Can Do
The Council did its part. On June 23, it sent ranked choice voting for special elections to the March 2028 ballot. Now San Jose voters decide.
Most voters have never heard much about ranked choice voting. Voter education is the single biggest factor in whether this passes, and it takes people in every Council district talking to their neighbors.
Sign up as a San Jose supporter. We'll keep you posted on events, volunteer opportunities, and the campaign as March 2028 gets closer. It takes about a minute.
The policy is sound. The cost is recovered the first time it's used. The public supports it nearly two to one. The voting equipment already supports it. The state has authorized it. The Council opened the door. In March 2028, San Jose voters get to walk through it.
