This simple change could increase voter participation and political civility in Sacramento | Opinion

After a grueling, year-long 2024 election process and a new Sacramento mayor and city council sworn in, it is time to consider a better alternative to elect Sacramento’s local leaders: Ranked choice voting.

In 49 other cities and counties across the U.S. that already use ranked choice voting to elect their local officials, the results are impressive: Evidence shows this method promotes political civility, supports consensus and gives voters greater choice and satisfaction.

But not enough people in Sacramento know what ranked choice voting actually is. That’s why we’ve launched “Better Ballot Sacramento,” a growing coalition of community organizations that support this change for our region.

Put simply, ranked choice voting allows each voter to rank the candidates on their ballot by preference.

Instead of marking only your top choice, voters can also mark their second choice. This essentially mimics Sacramento’s currently used “two-round runoff,” except ranked choice voting performs the “runoff” instantly in a single election instead of two.

This simple upgrade produces profound benefits. Evidence from more than 500 such elections held by other communities across the U.S. corroborates the benefits of ranked choice voting for voter engagement. Candidates campaign differently in ranked choice voting elections because they need to engage and listen to all voters, search for common ground and focus on solutions.

But the biggest benefit for Sacramento might be increased voter participation, allowing council members to earn and act on a mandate to represent voters beyond their base. Our city’s current process routinely excludes tens of thousands of voters from most local decisions because three out of every four races for city council are decided in the primary election when extremely low voter turnout is the norm.

Moreover, when a race does go to a runoff in the general election, Sacramento’s current system requires each candidate to run an entire second campaign, extending a four- to six-month campaign into a full year and thereby exacerbating the burdens on candidates to raise money. Runoffs are also notoriously negative: In a two-candidate race, a candidate faces less downside for attacking their opponent. Consequently, most of the money raised for a runoff campaign is spent on negative mailers and TV ads.

Sacramento has serious challenges such as homelessness, where council members have often gridlocked. There’s no shortage of talent and merit on our city council, but our election process hampers the voter engagement and collaboration necessary to find common ground.

We propose solving these problems by nixing the primary for local races and allowing all candidates to run in the general election. Using ranked choice voting, we can produce a majority winner in a single higher-turnout election, giving more residents a voice in our local politics.

So how do we make this change? In partnership with the League of Women Voters, Better Ballot Sacramento encourages the city council to place a measure on the 2026 ballot asking voters to adopt ranked choice voting.

In the meantime, we have work to do educating our community. Bringing this upgrade to Sacramento will make our elections more efficient, positive, solution-oriented and reflective of our community, benefiting candidates and voters alike.

This story was originally published April 22, 2025 at 5:00 AM.