Skip to content

Voters to cast ranked choice ballots for first time

on October 21, 2010

If you had to use ranked choice voting today, would you know what to do? That’s the question Oakland North asked voters in the lobby of the Grand Lake Theater last Sunday, and even after watching a two-hour spy flick, theatergoers explained the process admirably.

That’s good news for the Alameda County Registrar of Voters and a group of local volunteers, who spent this summer and fall giving talks, walking door to door, and attending community meetings to educate voters about ranked choice voting. The system makes its debut in Oakland this November for local races, including elections for mayor, city council, and the board of education.

Cynthia Cornejo explains the ranked choice voting system using the sample ballot that Oakland voters received in the mail this month. Ranked choice voting makes its Oakland debut this November in local races. Photo by Evan Wagstaff.

Cynthia Cornejo explains the ranked choice voting system using the sample ballot that Oakland voters received in the mail this month. Ranked choice voting makes its Oakland debut this November in local races. Photo by Evan Wagstaff.

If all of Oakland understands the system as well as the movie lovers we spoke with this Sunday, they’ll list their top three choices for all city positions, in order of preference. On election night, the Registrar of Voters will report all first choice votes, but it’s possible that no one candidate will win the simple majority needed to secure victory. In that case, the registrar will invoke an “instant runoff” by eliminating the candidates with the least votes. Voters’ second choices will count if their first choice is eliminated. The instant runoff continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.

“It’s been explained to me,” theatergoer Mark Green said, “but I’ve never seen it in action, so I’m not quite sure how it’s going to go.”

For more information, see our previous coverage on ranked choice voting. Also, check out the Registrar of Voters website or the City of Oakland ranked choice voting page.

Click the audio player to learn more about ranked choice voting.

1 Comments

  1. […] Oakland, and San Leandro voted with a ranked-choice ballot for the first time on Tuesday. Under the rules of ranked-choice voting, a system approved by Oakland voters in 2006, voters rank their top three choices for mayor on the […]



Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.

Photo by Basil D Soufi
logo
Oakland North

Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.

Latest Posts

Scroll To Top