[Opinion] Ranked Choice Voting In Irvine: Better Choices, Better Representation and More Democratic Elections

  • May 12, 2026, 10:05 am America/Los_Angeles

At the April 28 Irvine city council meeting, agenda item 5.2 Ranked Choice Voting Adoption was discussed by the councilmembers. Watch the council meeting video on the RCV agenda item here.

The council voted 4-3 to have an ordinance drafted for the use of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) for Irvine mayoral and city council elections starting in November 2028, along with obtaining implementation cost estimates from city staff. (Our county, state and federal elections will remain unchanged which is based on single-choice voting.)

RCV is a simple electoral reform that can lead to significant benefits and further strengthen the voice of the Irvine voters for our city council elections. It’s a commonsense upgrade from our broken, single-choice voting which favors special interests and underlies political dysfunction. 

RCV also reduces the effect of a political party encouraging “spoiler” candidates to run and split the vote with the opponent candidate, thereby increasing the chance of the party’s preferred candidate winning – despite their candidate not being the choice by the majority of voters. This is something we’ve seen in past council elections. ☹️

We’ve also seen this tactic used elsewhere in California: in 2014, a lawsuit alleged Democrat Ro Khanna recruited two Republicans to run and split the GOP vote in an effort to unseat incumbent Democrat Mike Honda in the Bay area. And in 2020, Kathy Garcia changed her party registration from Democrat to Republican to run in order to draw votes away from the Republicans, hoping to benefit the Democrat candidate running for the state Senate in the Central Valley. RCV eliminates these “dirty trick” tactics.

RCV is simple: it lets you rank multiple candidates running for the same seat in order of preference: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on, instead of being forced to choose just one candidate. If your first choice doesn’t have enough votes to win, your vote automatically transfers to your second preferred candidate (and so on). Watch a 3-minute video on how RCV works.

At the council meeting, there were some questions and concerns about RCV which are addressed below.

Concern #1: RCV is too confusing

Some Irvine councilmembers raised concerns that RCV will be too confusing to explain to the Irvine voters and that it’ll cause a low turnout because voters will be discouraged from voting.

Of course, with zero explanation or voter education, RCV may be confusing. But that’s why cities across California that  have adopted RCV included a comprehensive, public education program as part of launching RCV for their local elections.

And studies have shown that when cities conduct a RCV voter outreach and education campaign, it not only reduces voter confusion, it increases voter turnout (see below). And these California cities have proven, over and over again, that RCV is easily understood and even embraced by voters – young and old and by those whose first language is not English.

NOTE: RCV only applies if there are more than two candidates for a council seat. If there are only two candidates for a council seat, the ballot remains the same as now, which is a single-choice ballot. RCV is only used when there are three or more candidates for a council seat in which the ballot will allow the voter to choose their candidates in order of preference. (Voters can also choose to vote for only one candidate and not “rank” the remaining candidates on the ballot.)

Concern #2: “RCV will decrease turnout.”

Some Irvine councilmembers were concerned that voters will be confused by RCV, and thus, discourage them from voting in our city council elections. As stated above, the potential for voter confusion will be greatly reduced, and even eliminated, with a voter education campaign.

In fact, voters in cities that adopted RCV are 17% more likely to turn out for their city’s municipal elections than those in non-RCV jurisdictions, according to a 2014 peer-reviewed study. (See Does ranked choice Voting Increase voter turnout and mobilization?. Dowling, Tolbert, Micatka, and Donovan. August 2024.)

Also, youth turnout in RCV cities is higher than youth turnout in non-RCV cities, according to a 2021 peer-reviewed study. They attribute the higher youth turnout to greater campaign civility and mobilization and increased contact in RCV elections. (See Ranked Choice Voting and Youth Voter Turnout: The Roles of Campaign Civility and Candidate Contact. Juelich, C & Coll, J. June 2021.)

Voters like having additional choices in selecting their preferred candidates in which they like that their vote will count more, and not less if they only had one choice for their preferred candidates.

Concern #3: “Studies validate many concerns about RCV.”

Some councilmembers mentioned studies that support their concerns about RCV. But, many of these studies that are cited are flawed.

A research paper “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting” written by Steven Hill from the New Democracy Institute and Paul Haughey from the California RCV Institute reviewed 40 academic studies on RCV in which they found many of these RCV studies are misleading because they used questionable methodologies and poorly constructed surveys, lacked peer review, and/or made sweeping claims based on small sample sizes and limited evidence. Also, many of these studies are written by partisan organizations whose research and data are slanted towards a pre-determined result.

And unfortunately, these flawed and misleading RCV studies continue to be cited, especially by those who are against RCV.

Concern #4: “RCV is already banned in 19 states.”

It’s true that RCV is banned in 19 states. But, those are states that are governed by a Republican majority.

RCV is viewed as a threat to elected officials in those states who came to power with the support of a divisive minority in partisan elections. And they see RCV – which relies on obtaining majority voter support – as a threat to their reelection.

But, the evidence has shown that democracy is strengthened in cities and states that adopt RCV for their election.

For example, in 2022, Alaska held a special US House election in which Sarah Palin lost because Alaska’s independent voters preferred a more moderate candidate who earned the majority support of the voters because of RCV. Later, “Palin decried the state’s new ranked-choice voting system as ‘weird’ and claimed that it had ‘disenfranchised’ Alaskans…But the only strange thing going on in Alaskan politics this year is the flourishing of democracy.” (“Sarah Palin’s Loss Is Democracy’s Gain”, The Nation, September 2, 2022.)

Concern #5: “Because ballots are sometimes ‘exhausted’ they’re thrown out and won’t count.”

When there are three or more candidates running and you only rank one or two candidates, your ballot won’t be used if RCV goes to a later round of “instant runoff” should your first and second choices not receive enough votes to make it in the next instant runoff. This is what political scientists call “ballot exhaustion.”

It’s true that if you don’t rank all of the candidates running for an office, your ballot could be “thrown out” in later rounds. However, using this same logic, in our existing, single-choice city council elections, anyone who didn’t vote for the winning council candidate has their vote “thrown out” because we don’t have the option to vote for our second preferred candidate when there are multiple candidates running.

More votes count with RCV because everyone gets additional choices for their second, third, etc. preferred candidates. And often, voters will stop ranking candidates when they get to candidates that they don’t like (and would never vote for), so their vote may be “thrown out” if RCV continues its instant runoff for the remaining candidates that earned more votes than their preferred choices.

But, by using RCV the election will always result in the candidate who wins the majority of voters, and not the minority, which is often the case with our city council elections.

Ranked Choice Voting Makes Our Irvine Elections Better For All

Currently, our Irvine elections deprive voters of meaningful choices, create increasingly toxic campaigns (usually from “dark money” sources), advance candidates who lack broad support from voters, and leave voters feeling like our voices are not heard.

Ranked choice voting makes our Irvine elections better by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. RCV supports more representative outcomes and results in better choices, better campaigns and better representation on our city council.

Democracy and our elections are currently under attack throughout our country. And it’s time that we demand better and more fair elections by using RCV instead of single-choice voting for our Irvine city council races.

(And if you need a timely example of why we need RCV for our elections, just look at our state’s governor race in which we’re forced to choose just one candidate among a field of 61 candidates! When faced with multiple candidates, most of us would prefer to include multiple “backup” choices (in order of preference) instead of just one candidate when voting, should our most-favorite candidate not earn the majority of votes.)

Learn More About Ranked Choice Voting

For more information on RCV, visit these two nonpartisan organizations whose missions are to make our elections fairer and more democratic through the use of RCV: