What Ranked Choice Voting Might Look Like In Irvine
Ranked choice voting (RCV) is a reform that enables voters to rank their preferences for office, preventing an unpopular candidate from emerging as the winner when votes are split among more popular or more similar candidates. Currently, the City of Irvine has a single choice voting system, giving voters just one option when voting for Mayor or their district council representative.
In California last year, Redondo Beach used RCV in its mayoral and city council elections. Polling by Lake Research Partners showed that in Redondo Beach, 87% of voters indicated that they understood RCV well, and 61% favored RCV. In addition, Oakland used RCV in its mayoral special election.
Two recent polls in other parts of California show that there is significant support for ranked choice voting in elections. A recent FM3 research poll found that 71% of LA voters strongly back RCV as part of a package of government reforms. Another poll in Santa Clara County revealed that 64% of voters in Santa Clara County support moving to a ranked choice system.
Most Believe Winner of an Election Should Win by a Majority
For a comprehensive analysis of RCV, the American Bar Association released a report last year titled, What We Know About Rank Choice Voting. This report contrasts RCV with the single choice plurality system that Irvine currently has. Most people in a democracy believe that the winner of an election should have the majority of votes, but in the current system candidates with less than a majority of the votes can win office. An example of this is the 2024 election where Larry Agran won the mayor’s race with 41% of the vote.
RCV also lessens the likelihood of extreme candidates winning an election because candidates need to appeal to a wider pool of voters to become a second or third choice. Having to appeal to a wider pool of voters lessens negative campaigning. Elections may even have candidates who are aligned telling voters to vote for an opponent as a second choice.
Diminishes Influence of Special Interests
RCV could diminish the influence of special interests who seek to run candidates who are only in the race to split the vote. It’s not uncommon for a local party or interest group to run a candidate simply to split the vote so that a less popular candidate has a better chance of winning.
An example of how RCV could have worked in 2024 in District One is the following hypothetical (all of these names are fictional): Christine is an Irvine mom who felt that Robin Yang reflected her values and lived experiences, but she was afraid to cast her ballot for Yang because Mary Freeman seemed to have wrapped up most of the support from interest groups that could have also backed Yang. Additionally, Freeman had amassed a large campaign fund that put her ahead of all the other candidates in the race for this district. Christine absolutely did not want Chris Huang, a somewhat strong candidate whose positions were not aligned with either Yang or Freeman’s, to represent her. So instead of voting her conscience for Robin Yang, Christine made a calculated vote for Freeman. Freeman ended up winning. If RCV existed in this race, Christine would have ranked her vote for Yang as her first choice, Freeman as her second choice, and McDonald as her third choice.
RCV empowers voters by giving them more choices. It also increases turnout and engagement because candidates have to reach out to voters they may not normally spend much time with, as they compete to become someone’s second or third choice. Ultimately, voters get to vote for who they really want to vote for instead of making calculated votes like Christine did in the hypothetical situation in District One. Irvine could lead the way in Orange County by providing voters with more options in implementing RCV in our municipal elections.
Related articles:
Read: Irvine Elections Do Not Truly Represent the Majority
Read: Why Irvine Needs Ranked Choice Voting
5 Comments
Katherine Daigle
March 3, 2026 at 1:33 pmA Complicated System Prone to Manipulation – I wrote a lengthy column about Rank Choice Voting.
Voters ranked-choice voting (RCV) may sound like a modest reform, but it is actually a dangerously complex system that invites confusion, frustration, and manipulation while undermining the simple, transparent principle of “one person, one vote.”
Unlike traditional elections, RCV requires voters to rank candidates in order of preference. This triggers multiple rounds of counting, vote adjustments, and eliminations until one candidate finally crosses a 50% threshold. The process is opaque, error-prone, and virtually impossible for the average voter to follow in real time. When people cannot clearly see how their ballot is counted—or how it might be reallocated in later rounds and trust in the entire electoral system erodes.
Worse, the push to impose RCV is not coming from grassroots voters. It is being bankrolled and promoted by left-wing advocacy groups and major donors who see it as a tool to reshape outcomes in their favor. The results speak for themselves: RCV has already flipped two congressional seats from Republican to Democrat, confirming the partisan advantage critics have warned about.
Even more troubling is the related “Final Five Voting” proposal, an explicit step toward full RCV. Under this scheme, party affiliation is stripped from the first-round ballot. Every candidate runs together regardless of party, voters cast a single vote, and the top five finishers advance to an RCV runoff. The effect is to neuter the role of political parties, the very organizations that give structure, accountability, and ideological clarity to our democracy. Removing parties does not make elections “non-partisan”; it simply hands even greater influence to wealthy donors and elite interests who can shape the field before voters ever see a ranked-choice ballot.
As of February 2026, this complicated system has been adopted in 48 jurisdictions (reaching nearly 14 million voters), including:
Alaska
Maine
New York City
Cambridge, MA
Minneapolis, MN
San Francisco, CA
It has also been used to nominate candidates in Democratic primaries and by the Virginia Republican Party for its statewide and congressional nominees.
RCV and its variants are being quietly rolled out by well-funded interests who benefit from a more convoluted, less transparent process. America, and especially California, where rampant cheating goes on, does not need a system that confuses voters, multiplies opportunities for error and manipulation, and sidelines political parties. We need to defend the straightforward, accountable “ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE” model that has served our republic for generations.
Branda Lin
March 3, 2026 at 1:56 pmIrvine City Council races are nonpartisan so each candidate’s party affiliation would never appear on the ballot. And it’s more democratic to want a candidate to win by a majority.
Branda Lin
March 3, 2026 at 3:18 pmKatherine, you ran for elected office 9 times:
– 2014 Irvine Mayor – 3rd out of 3
– 2016 State Assembly (primary) 3rd out of 3
– 2016 Irvine Mayor, 4th out of 5
– 2018 State Assembly (primary), 4th out of 5
– 2018 Irvine Mayor, 3rd out of 4
– 2019 OC Board of Supervisors – 7th out of 7
– 2020 Irvine Mayor – 4th out of 4
– 2022 Irvine Mayor – 4th out of 5
– 2024 South OCCCD – 2nd out of 3
Perhaps this is why you are against RCV?
Scott Hansen
March 3, 2026 at 3:09 pmI feel Ranked Choice Voting isn’t complicated. Everybody gets to put down their first choice, second choice, and third choice, etc. That’s essentially it.
Ankur Parikh
March 4, 2026 at 7:29 amI would strongly support ranked choice voting for a lot of the same reasons, but especially because it helps decide a winner based on consensus. A candidate should not win unless they are able to get 50% of the vote, and so RCV allows for this to happen immediately (rather than a later runoff). Woodbridge High School recently implemented this for our ASB elections because we would have often had candidates win with 20-40% of the vote for positions where 3-6 people ran against each other. Now, it requires candidates to campaign to a larger group of students to get ranked on their ballots, if not first, then somewhere else on the ballot.
I don’t see how RCV is too confusing, but there are plenty of resources out there the help explain. One of my favorites is this Instagram video from @nycvotes that creates a very visual explanation of how RCV works: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJXbdrdv4CQ/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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