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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 districts. Building on the California Supreme Court's 2023 Pico v. Santa Monica decision, the piece argues proportional RCV could protect minority voting power while restoring citywide participation and contested races. Read the full piece at the Davis Vanguard for more details.

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 Irvine and the California Libertarian Party. If Measure D passes, Irvine would become the first city in Orange County to adopt ranked choice voting, joining seven California cities that already use it. Read the full piece at Voter Choice Irvine for more details.

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 do more to elect candidates of choice in diverse communities. They argue the state should reform the CVRA so local governments have remedies beyond drawing district lines, an argument that lines up closely with the case for proportional ranked choice voting in California. Read the full piece at the California Law Review for more details.

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 in 2024 were effectively decided in March before most voters weighed in. Organizers would prefer the City Council refer the charter amendment to voters, but they are prepared to restart signature gathering if it does not. Read the full piece at The Observer for more details.

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 shortcomings directly to the case for ranked ballots. Read the full piece at the Los Angeles Times for more details.

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 to November, and use RCV to guarantee a majority winner. Read the full piece at the East Bay Times for more details.

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 opponents in California are citing. Read the full piece at The Liberal OC for more details.

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 of the ways to get to proportional representation (and we at Cal RCV believe it is the best fit for California and the US overall). Read the full piece at Stanford Law School for more details.

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 followed by an instant runoff in November, which would cut primary spending and leave voters with more real choices. Read the full piece at The Mercury News for more details.

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 details.

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 piece at Tri-City Voice for more details.