Ranked Choice Voting 

With ranked choice voting (RCV), voters can rank as many candidates as they want in order of choice. Candidates do best when they attract a strong core of first-choice support while also reaching out for second and even third choices from voters.

When used as an “instant runoff” to elect a single candidate like a mayor or a governor, RCV helps elect a candidate that better reflects the support of a majority of voters. When used as a form of proportional representation voting to elect more than one candidate in multi-seat elections for a city council or school board, RCV helps to more fairly represent the full spectrum of voters.

I support the use of ranked-choice voting for single-seat statewide executive office – like Governor, Attorney General, Treasurer – as well as for elected Mayors and for President.

I also support the use of ranked-choice voting for municipal, school, college, county and special-district elections.

Where seats are elected in multi-seat, at-large elections, ranked-choice voting will make the results more proportional and hence more representative of the voters.

Where seats are elected in single-seat districts, ranked-choice voting eliminates the need for holding run-off elections. This (i) reduces campaign costs for candidates as well as for the public that must pay to conduct the elections, (ii) allows public financing dollars to go further because they only have to apply to a single election, (iii) ensures that decisions on who to elect are held in higher and more diverse voter turnout general elections instead of lower turnout and less diverse primary elections, and (iv) makes it easier for voters to express their will by only having to vote once.

Ranked choice voting is already in use in Alameda and San Francisco counties in the Bay Area, and in other cities and counties around the United States. (see videos to right)

Currently California state law allows charter cities to enact elections by ranked-choice voting, but not general law cities. As Secretary of State, I would support amending state law to give general law cities the same option.