{"id":484456,"date":"2026-10-04T02:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T02:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/484456\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T02:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T02:44:11","slug":"2026-election-irvines-measure-d-would-change-how-the-council-is-elected-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/484456\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Election: Irvine\u2019s Measure D would change how the council is elected \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irvine<\/a> is asking voters to decide whether the city should switch from its traditional, one-candidate election system, to a ranked-choice voting system for councilmember and mayor races starting in 2028.<\/p>\n

The new system would have voters rank candidates in order of preference with last-place candidates being eliminated. If a voter picks an eliminated candidate as their first choice, their vote is instead transferred to their second-choice candidate. The process repeats until one candidate receives more than 50% of votes.<\/p>\n

If Measure D is approved by voters, the city could shoulder the unique costs related to being the first to adopt ranked-choice voting in Orange County<\/a>, including the cost of educating voters and modifying county voting machines and election materials to accommodate.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a caveat included in the measure. If Measure D passes, ranked-choice voting would only be implemented if doing so costs less than 0.23% of Irvine\u2019s general fund, or about $750,000 by 2028.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Irvine, candidates are regularly elected with less than one-third of the vote. Which means two-thirds of voters are represented by someone they don\u2019t want. That is not real democracy,\u201d Councilmember Kathleen Treseder said in the argument in favor that appears with the ballot. \u201cRanked Choice Voting guarantees that Irvine residents elect officeholders who win majority support. And it\u2019s cost-effective. This iswhat real democracy looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also said ranked-choice voting acts as an \u201cinstant runoff\u201d and voters would not have to feel like they are choosing \u201cthe lesser evil\u201d when casting a ballot with one choice.<\/p>\n

It was a divided council that put the measure on the ballot, and Councilmember James Mai penned the ballot argument in opposition.<\/p>\n

He argued the city is facing a budget deficit and it is unknown what the change to Irvine\u2019s election process would ultimately cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cCities that adopted ranked-choice voting did so to eliminate expensive runoff elections,\u201d he added. \u201cIrvine does not hold runoff elections. We don\u2019t have the problem this is supposed to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur elections work now. Implementing this will be very expensive,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it has had some serious problems in some places where it has been tried.\u201d<\/p>\n

A simple majority of voters in favor is required for Measure D to pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irvine is asking voters to decide whether the city should switch from its traditional, one-candidate election system, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1400,163,165,164,7,204,2462,1071,100,611,8047,13,77],"class_list":["post-484456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-2026-elections","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-california","tag-election","tag-irvine","tag-local-government","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orange-county-elections","tag-politics","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484456","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=484456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}