What’s the history of ranked choice voting in Santa Clara County?

Santa Clara voters approved the use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in 1998, but our election equipment couldn’t handle RCV elections at the time – this was nearly a decade before the first smartphone. Now, RCV is used by seven California cities, including four in the Bay Area. 2024 polling finds that 64% of county voters want to adopt RCV.

Who uses ranked choice voting?

Two states and over 50 municipalities in the U.S. currently use ranked choice voting. This includes San Francisco; Oakland; New York City; Minneapolis and St. Paul; Salt Lake City; Portland, OR; and Seattle.

What does the research say about ranked choice voting?

In Spring 2025, the American Bar Association published a comprehensive review of recent literature published in peer-reviewed academic journals and books in the report What We Know About Ranked Choice Voting, Updated for 2025:

According to the authors:

• The research provides evidence that RCV is an improvement over plurality voting with clear benefits in terms of representation, campaign quality, mobilization, and turnout.

• Research shows that RCV encourages greater consensus building as well as more civil political campaigns.

• The research currently has more marginal or difficult-to-test effects in other areas, such as the diversity of candidates running for office.

• There are some mixed results from the published studies, in part due to authors emphasizing either the glass as half full or half empty, often based on similar data sources.

• As Drutman and Strano reported in 2021, ‘the research should also allay fears that RCV is too confusing or discriminatory: voters understand RCV, and learn to like it, too, particularly with experience.’ That remains true today.

Who opposes RCV?

RCV is one of the fastest-growing voting reforms in the nation, and everywhere it’s used, voters say they like it and want to continue using it.

Some dark-money organizations and elected officials are used to winning under the current system, and want to protect the status quo. Vocal RCV opponents have included the Project 2025-associated Heritage Foundation; the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo; representatives of groups that have tried to shrink the federal Voting Rights Act; and key members of the 2020 “Stop the Steal’ movement.

How do voters respond to RCV?

Everywhere it’s used, voters understand it, like it, and want to keep it. Here are two recent examples:

• In 2024, 92% of voters in California Bay Area cities that use RCV said they understood RCV well – compared to 86% of voters who said they understand our “Top Two” elections well. 70% wanted to keep or expand RCV.

• In 2025, 96% of New York City voters found their ballot simple to complete (including at least 94% of every racial group surveyed), and 76% wanted to keep or expand it to general elections.

More data is available here.

Voters from all demographics use RCV effectively, with voters of color tending to rank more candidates than White voters, according to a 2024 report. 99.8% of all ballots are valid in RCV elections.

How do candidates respond to RCV?

More women and candidates of color run and win in RCV elections, including in California cities, according to a 2018 study. Under RCV, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Salt Lake City elected their first majority people-of-color city councils. New York City elected its first majority-women city council, Oakland elected its first four women mayors, and Alaska elected its first Native congresswoman.

Research shows that candidates run more positive and collaborative campaigns in RCV elections, including by “cross-endorsing” – encouraging voters to rank both them and an opponent.

What about one person, one vote?

In an RCV election, your ballot counts for one person – your highest-ranked remaining candidate. Every court that has examined whether RCV upholds “one person, one vote” has said it does, including a unanimous three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Do I have to rank all the candidates?

No, you can rank as many or as few candidates as you’d like. But you have the option to rank backup choices – which you don’t get at all in our current elections.

RCV makes 17% more votes count in the final outcome of an election, even if some voters don’t rank one of the top two candidates on their ballot (known as an “inactive” or “exhausted” ballot). Compare this to:

Turnout in Santa Clara’s November elections is 71% higher than our June primaries – but half of our County Supervisor races are decided in the primary. In the others, the much smaller primary electorate decides who will be on the November ballot. With RCV, we’ll have a single election with 71% higher turnout, and many more voters will get to decide who represents us.

In Santa Clara County’s last four election cycles:

• Half of the County Supervisor races were decided in the primary (5 out of 10)

• Two-thirds of countywide races were decided in the primary (4 out of 6)

• Of the races that went to the general election, the general election turnout averaged 71% higher than primary turnout.

RCV is also a dramatically faster, cheaper, and better alternative to special elections, which have a runoff two months later if no one wins a majority. In such runoffs, the average decline in turnout is 40%, so the winner often gets fewer votes than they did in the first round! With RCV, far more voters have a voice in the final choice – even if some don’t rank all the candidates.