Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...As the city contends with financial uncertainty, optional ranked choice voting for special elections — aimed at cutting the costs of future contests — appears to be headed for the 2028 primary ballot after the San Jose Council approved the proposal Tuesday.
The initial proposal sought to place it on the upcoming November general election ballot.
Proponents say ranked choice would save the city roughly $3 million should a special election arise. This new push comes four years after the City Council rejected a comprehensive plan to bring ranked choice voting to all municipal elections.
The vote advances the proposal, but the council can still modify the language or scrap the measure completely before the final deadline to submit it to the ballot.
Under ranked choice, a separate runoff election is unnecessary in a nonpartisan race. Instead, voters pick multiple candidates on the ballot and rank them in order of preference — first, second, third, and beyond. If no candidate wins an outright majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their ballots are redistributed to those voters’ next-preferred choices. The process repeats until a clear winner emerges with a majority of the vote.
According to a memorandum from Councilmember Cohen, holding the ballot measure during a non-mayoral election year in 2026 would have cost the city $2.7 million. By delaying the measure to the 2028 primary election, the cost drops to under $700,000, allowing the city to return $2.3 million previously set aside for election costs back into the general fund reserve.
The system has been gaining traction across the nation. According to the electoral advocacy organization FairVote, at least 49 jurisdictions across 22 states and Washington D.C. currently use ranked choice voting or have passed it for upcoming elections.
Affecting roughly 14 million voters, the system has been adopted by major metropolitan hubs like New York City. Closer to home, Bay Area cities such as San Francisco and Oakland already use the format, where it has been met with mixed reactions.
Proponents of ranked choice voting assert the system promotes diversity, reduces mudslinging, and saves election costs because it eliminates runoffs. Critics counter that ranked choice helps candidates game the system, complicates the process, disenfranchises voters such as older adults and communities of color, and takes longer to count, which could fuel conspiracy theories.
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