{"id":249701,"date":"2026-04-03T06:23:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T06:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/249701\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T06:23:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T06:23:22","slug":"push-for-ranked-choice-voting-in-sacramento-could-reshape-future-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/249701\/","title":{"rendered":"Push for ranked choice voting in Sacramento could reshape future elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A democracy debate is underway in Sacramento that could change the way elections are held.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, six people ran for Sacramento mayor and no one got more than 30% of the vote during the primary election. Now, there&#8217;s a push to eliminate the primary and allow voters to choose more than one candidate.<\/p>\n<p>Paula Lee, with the League of Women Voters, is trying to eliminate primary elections for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cityofsacramento.gov\/content\/dam\/portal\/clerk\/Elections\/Ranked%20Choice%20Voting%20Ballot%20Title%20and%20Summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sacramento City Council and mayoral races<\/a> and hold what&#8217;s called &#8220;ranked choice&#8221; voting during the November general elections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Instead of voting for just one, we&#8217;re able to rank our candidates by preference, so you have a first choice, second, maybe even a third,&#8221; Lee said.<\/p>\n<p>If no one gets more than 50% on the first count, the lowest performing candidate is eliminated and their supporter&#8217;s next choices are counted until someone gets a majority.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If your first choice falls short, your vote is not wasted,&#8221; Lee said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.betterballotsacramento.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Volunteers are now trying to gather 43,000 signatures<\/a> to get a ranked choice voting measure placed on the ballot.<\/p>\n<p>If approved, it would take effect in 2028 \u2014 just in time for the next mayoral race.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ranked choice voting is one of the most contentious things there is in modern voting,&#8221; CBS News Sacramento political analyst Gary Dietrich said.<\/p>\n<p>Dietrich noted that it could dramatically change the way candidates court votes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s going to be all kinds of shenanigans that will happen where people are trying to bump competitors or non-competitive first-choice candidates up into those lower ones to draw votes away from others,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Sacramento&#8217;s League of Women Voters, which does not endorse candidates, says the voting method is a nonpartisan way to improve elections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t help or hurt any particular party,&#8221; Lee said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just really great for voters, and it&#8217;s really great for candidates, too.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ranked choice voting is already used in six California cities, including San Francisco and Oakland.<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A democracy debate is underway in Sacramento that could change the way elections are held. Last year, six&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-249701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}