![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/251104-SCCVOTE-JG-05_qed.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe City Council punted a plan to ask voters to allow ranked choice voting until 2028, citing concerns about the cost of putting the measure on the ballot this November.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Edgardo Domingo fills out a ballot at a voting booth at the Vietnamese American Cultural Center in San Jos\u00e9 on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.\u00a0(Joseph Geha\/KQED)<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can restore a district\u2019s representation more quickly and at a lower cost than a two-step election process, that is compelling and it\u2019s worth having the option available to us,\u201d said Councilmember Michael Mulcahy.<\/p>\n
In San Francisco and Oakland, all local elections are conducted using ranked choice. Supporters tout the system as a way to save costs and avoid low-turnout runoffs. Opponents of ranked choice argue that it is overly complicated and will lead to confusion among voters and errors<\/a> by election administrators.<\/p>\n The change proposed in San Jos\u00e9 is limited: If a mayor or councilmember were to leave office before the end of their term, the council would be allowed, but not required, to call a ranked choice election to fill the seat. The council would maintain its current options of calling a traditional special election or filling the seat through appointment.<\/p>\n The council voted 9-2 to move the ranked choice proposal forward. Vice Mayor Pam Foley and Councilmember George Casey opposed the idea, and Councilmember Peter Ortiz was absent.<\/p>\n \u201cI just don\u2019t understand the need to add an extra layer of complexity to the voting process,\u201d said Casey.<\/p>\n Ranked choice supporters initially aimed to place the question before voters in November, but Councilmember David Cohen said a citywide election would cost over $2 million. San Jos\u00e9 is already scheduled to hold a mayoral election in March 2028; the cost of adding a measure to that ballot would be under $700,000.<\/p>\n \u201cWe decided it was prudent to place the measure on the 2028 primary election [ballot],\u201d Cohen said. \u201cThat will help us in our next budget cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n The council approved a budget<\/a> this month that closed a $50.3 million shortfall, but another deficit of nearly $27 million is projected in the 2027-28 fiscal year.<\/p>\n In 2025, a special election<\/a> and subsequent runoff<\/a> were held to fill a vacant council seat in District 3, after the resignation<\/a> of disgraced Councilmember Omar Torres. A single ranked choice election to fill the seat could have saved the city $1.5 million, according to a memo written by four councilmembers supporting the ranked choice idea.<\/p>\n Gabby Chavez-Lopez, the nonprofit executive who lost the District 3 runoff, was among the handful of residents who spoke in favor of the ranked choice proposal during public comment Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cAs someone who has recently personally experienced a special election firsthand, I also understand the significant resources, time and community fatigue \u2014 to put it nicely \u2014 that come with multiple elections,\u201d Chavez-Lopez said.<\/p>\n Robert Rissel, a San Jose resident, said votes redistributed through ranked choice create an \u201cartificial majority.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo one candidate has received a majority of first-place votes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The memorandum approved by the council on Tuesday requires a final vote, likely sometime next year, to officially place the ranked choice measure on the March 2028 ballot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City Council punted a plan to ask voters to allow ranked choice voting until 2028, citing concerns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-372272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372272","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=372272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}