Press Contact: Matthai Chakko, (510) 981-7008RANKED CHOICE VOTING PRIMER FOR BERKELEY VOTERS
Mayoral race as well as several City Council races will use this system
Berkeley, California (Friday, October 09, 2020) - Learn how Ranked Choice Voting works to ensure that your vote gets counted in the event that no candidate gets an outright majority and your top choices get eliminated.
Understanding the ranking process can help guide your decisions for the November 3 election, when several City Council seats and the Mayoral race will use the method if no one candidate gets a majority of votes outright.
Ranked Choice Voting, which is sometimes referred to by its acronym, "RCV," allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, and eliminates the need for a separate, run-off election.
How ranked choice votes are counted
Voters can -- but aren't required to -- indicate their first, second, third, fourth, and fifth choice for an office. Some voters choose only one top choice. If a candidate receives a majority of first choice votes, they are the winner.
If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first place votes, then the ranked choice process is used:
- First, the candidate with the fewest first place votes is eliminated.
- Second, voters who selected the eliminated last place candidate have their votes transferred to their second choice. If they didn't choose a second choice, they do not have a vote in the second round.
- Third, votes are re-counted to see if there is a candidate with more than 50 percent of the vote.
- If no candidate receives more than 50 percent, the process of eliminating the last place candidate and transferring votes is repeated until a majority winner is declared.
See real-life examples of ranked choice voting tallies in Alameda County results for the 2016 elections in Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro, the three cities in the County that use this runoff method. In Berkeley, the 2016 District 2 contest provides an example of how Ranked Choice Voting has been used.
More resources understand ranked choice voting
Ranked Choice Voting is sometimes called "instant run-off voting" but that does not mean the election is decided on Election night. All ballots are processed and counted before a race is decided.
The use of Ranked Choice Voting does not change any other part of the voting experience.
For more information, visit The Alameda County Registrar of Voters RCV website at www.acvote.org/voting/rcv or call (510) 272-6933.
Look up your City Council district and get all of the City's official information about Nov. 3 ballot measures, candidates, campaign finance and more on our Elections page.
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