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UC Riverside professor Stan Oklobdzija makes the case for multimember city council districts in California, pointing to Portland's switch to proportional representation using the single transferable vote, a form of proportional ranked choice voting. He argues that electing several members per district, paired with fusion voting, would let new parties such as a pro-housing bloc compete and give voters a real check on incumbents who rarely face serious challengers. He suggests

Irvine voters will decide on Measure D, which would switch city council and mayor races to ranked choice voting starting in 2028. Supporters like Councilmember Kathleen Treseder point out that Irvine candidates regularly win with less than a third of the vote, while Councilmember James Mai argues the change would be costly at a time of budget deficits. The measure only takes effect if implementation costs less than 0.23% of the city's general fund, about $750,000. Read the fu

We analyzed every California primary from 2012 to 2024. Top-two keeps shutting out voters, women, and candidates of color. Top Five + RCV fixes it.

Columnist Jerry Roberts uses Santa Barbara's 4-3 rent control vote to show how district elections can hand power to a council majority that represents far fewer voters: the four members in favor won 10,728 votes combined in their last races, while the three opposed won 19,083. He calls on the next council to put electoral reforms before voters, including ranked choice voting and a mix of citywide and district seats. Proportional ranked choice voting, which fills several seats

Three candidates in San Francisco's crowded District 10 supervisor race, Shawn Richard, DJ Brookter and JR Eppler, plan to endorse each other under ranked choice voting. Richard says teaming up is how you compete in an RCV race, and SF State political scientist Jason McDaniel notes that slates work best when campaigns drive the message home to voters. The move echoes the District 8 alliance and could consolidate votes against frontrunner Theo Ellington in later rounds. Read t

More than 50 elected officials, organizations, and community leaders have endorsed Irvine's Measure D, which would bring ranked choice voting to city council and mayor races starting in 2028. Backers include Rep. Dave Min, Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, the League of Women Voters of Orange County, FairVote, and parties from the Democrats to the Greens and Libertarians. Campaign director Branda Lin notes that Irvine candidates routinely win with less than 40% of the vote

The Bay Area Reporter covers the same District 8 ranked choice team-up, noting it is the first time in 16 years D8 candidates have run a coordinated ranking strategy. McCoy and Patel announced the alliance in Noe Valley Town Square, and Patel says it gives her underdog campaign visibility she has struggled to get. Rival Michael Nguyen says he is open to a ranked choice strategy of his own, while frontrunner Manny Yekutiel says the pact doesn't change his approach. Read the fu

San Francisco District 8 supervisor candidates Gary McCoy and Darshini Patel are asking their supporters to rank the other second, a classic ranked choice voting alliance. Whichever of the two is eliminated first could pass most of their votes to the other, which could help McCoy overtake frontrunner Manny Yekutiel. The fourth candidate, Michael Nguyen, is not joining the pact for now. Read the full piece at Mission Local for more details.

Senate Bill 1164, awaiting Governor Newsom's signature, would revise the California Voting Rights Act to recognize alternatives to single-member districts, opening a path for cities like Davis to adopt proportional ranked choice voting citywide. The Vanguard reports that Davis has seen competition collapse since switching to district elections in 2020, with research from Preston Jordan finding roughly 8 percent of at-large seats uncontested compared to 38 percent under distri

Irvine voters will decide on Measure D this November, a ballot measure that would replace the city's choose-one ballot with ranked choice voting for mayoral and city council races beginning in 2028. Voter Choice Irvine, the coalition behind the measure, argues that RCV would end the vote splitting that has let Irvine candidates win with roughly a third of the vote, and the campaign has drawn endorsements across the political spectrum, including from the Democrats of Greater I

This California Law Review Note argues that the California Voting Rights Act, which pushed hundreds of cities and school districts from at-large to district-based elections, has delivered uneven results, improving Latine and AAPI officeholding in some Bay Area school districts while producing no gains or losses in others. The authors find that California law effectively forecloses the alternative systems, including cumulative voting and other proportional methods, that could

Better Ballot Sacramento, an initiative of the League of Women Voters of Sacramento County, is building a coalition to place ranked choice voting on the city's November 2028 ballot, a change that would eliminate Sacramento's city primaries and decide every council and mayoral race on a single November ballot. Supporters point to FairVote research showing that Sacramento's primary electorate is older and whiter than its November electorate, and that three of four council races

Four Los Angeles Times readers respond to a piece on California's election reforms, and ranked choice voting runs through their answers. One writer calls RCV an overlooked fix that ends the spoiler problem and replaces costly runoffs, another argues the top-two primary would work fine if paired with RCV, and a third proposes scrapping primaries entirely for a single preferential general election. Together they show California voters connecting the top-two primary's shortcomin

Paul Haughey of the California Ranked Choice Voting Institute argues that organized opposition to RCV comes from politicians who owe their seats to plurality winners and minority rule. He traces the campaign from the Santa Clara Republican Party's talking points against San Jose's RCV proposal to Heritage Foundation priorities, bans in 18 states, and vetoes by Governors Brown and Newsom. He closes with a California proposal: keep the open primary, send four or five candidates

Stanford Law highlights Professor Pamela Karlan's PBS On Democracy conversation about proportional representation as an answer to gerrymandering. A group of scholars has written an open letter urging Congress to consider proportional multi-member districts instead of continuing the redistricting arms race. The piece doesn't specifically reference ranked choice voting, but it puts proportional representation squarely in the national reform conversation. Proportional RCV is one

Dan Chmielewski catalogs what he sees as ranked choice voting's real-world shortfalls, using Alaska's 2022 special election and New York City's 2021 mayoral primary to argue the system delivers exhausted ballots and delayed results rather than its promised benefits. Cal RCV board member Paul Haughey responds in the comments, and the author counters that Irvine holds no primaries for council or mayor. It is a useful window into the specific election-night examples RCV opponent

Cal RCV board director Paul Haughey argues that ranked choice voting would have filled Eric Swalwell's vacant District 14 seat in the June election instead of sending Alameda County into an expensive August runoff. He notes that special election runoffs draw roughly a quarter of general election turnout, and that California's top-two system regularly lets vote-splitting push the least-preferred candidates onto the November ballot. He also makes the case for a top-five primary

An Orange County judge has ordered Huntington Beach to use ranked choice voting in its November 2026 City Council election, making it the first RCV contest anywhere in the county. Judge Craig Griffin chose RCV as the remedy in a California Voting Rights Act case alleging the city's at-large elections diluted Latino voting power. Irvine is separately weighing whether to put RCV before its own voters this November. Read the full piece at the Los Angeles Times for more details.

The San Jose City Council voted 8-2 to advance a ballot measure that would use ranked choice voting to fill unexpected council vacancies, but pushed it from November 2026 to March 2028 to save about $2 million in election costs. Supporters argue RCV would eliminate the expense of separate runoff elections; opponents say it adds complexity for voters. This is the council's second look at ranked choice voting in four years. Read the full piece at San José Spotlight for more det

Andreas Kadavanich argues that Fremont should write ranked choice voting into the city charter it is currently drafting, noting that sitting council members have won with as little as 26 percent of the vote. He points out that California charter cities are free to adopt RCV, and that four Alameda County cities already use it, along with Maine and Alaska statewide. He urges Fremont voters to insist on ranked choice voting before they approve the new charter. Read the full piec