A group of Oaklanders, including Councilmember Noel Gallo and former Councilmember Loren Taylor, are seeking to overhaul Oakland’s electoral system.
Gallo and two other Oakland residents—Carol Wyatt and Martha Shin—informed the City Clerk in early January that they intend to circulate a petition for a ballot measure that would eliminate ranked-choice voting from Oakland elections, returning the city to the system of primary and general elections that were used prior to 2010. This change would affect elections for all eight City Council seats, all seven Oakland Unified school board seats, mayor, auditor, and city attorney.
Election rules are codified in the City Charter—Oakland’s list of laws. If the group seeking to ditch ranked-choice voting collect enough signatures to have their measure placed on the ballot, voters would get the final say in November or another upcoming election.
Gallo told The Oaklandside he supports returning to an election system that is “clean and direct.” He said Taylor, a former councilmember who ran for mayor in 2022, approached him with the petition.
“There were several other people that signed it, but I didn’t pay too much attention to who the other people were,” Gallo said. “It was Loren Taylor that pretty much crafted the language.”
When asked about this, Taylor said, “No, I can’t claim authorship” of the petition notice, and that he was “merely playing messenger.”
“I am generally supportive of what they’re doing,” Taylor told The Oaklandside. “I think ranked-choice voting has demonstrated that there are some fixes needed if we’re going to keep it. But as is, it does not seem to be working.”
Oakland’s old system involved holding a primary election, usually in the spring, followed by a general election. During the primary, anyone can run for whatever office is open. The two top vote-getters in the primary then head to the November general election, where voters pick a single winner.
In 2006, the Oakland City Council placed on a measure on the ballot to switch to ranked-choice voting, which voters approved. This method gets rid of the spring primary and holds a single election in the fall. Voters rank multiple candidates for an office in order of preference. If one candidate gets more than 50% of the voters’ first choices, they win—period. If no one gets over 50% of the first-choice votes, election officials eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of votes, and their supporters’ second choices are disbursed to the remaining candidates. This process is repeated until a candidate gets over 50% of the total votes.
Opponents say ranked-choice is too confusing. Supporters say it’s more democratic
Loren Taylor lost the 2022 mayoral election after nine rounds of eliminations in the ranked choice voting process. Taylor had the most first-choice votes of the 10 candidates, but it only netted him 33% of the total. Ultimately, more voters gave Thao their support in the following rounds of counting, putting her over the 50% mark.
During his concession speech, Taylor criticized ranked-choice voting, saying “it isn’t working.” He argued that it is a form of voter suppression because there were thousands of exhausted ballots—cases where voters didn’t select either of the final two mayoral candidates as one of their choices, and so were not included in the final runoff tabulations.
The notice obtained by The Oaklandside claims that repealing ranked choice voting would prevent a candidate from winning without a simple majority, reduce voter disenfranchisement, lead to faster election results, and reduce voter confusion, among other things.
“It’s confusing, people don’t understand what happens to their vote once the counting happens,” Carol Wyatt told The Oaklandside. “That’s why I’m for abolishing it.”
Wyatt, a former member of the Oakland Public Ethics Commission, said she thinks ranked-choice voting is similar to the electoral college—the system for awarding electoral votes to presidential candidates. This system came under fire in 2016 when Donald Trump won the election with the most electoral votes but failed to secure the most popular votes.
“To me it’s not that complicated: I don’t want a Trump situation on a local level,” Wyatt said.
Ranked-choice voting has been popular with Oakland voters. When voters adopted the system in 2006, they did so with 69% of the vote, and no one submitted official arguments against it. Some candidates and voters criticized ranked-choice in 2010 when Jean Quan beat former state senator Don Perata in the mayoral race. The key to Quan’s victory was that far more voters chose her as their second or third choice compared to Perata. Over 50 cities in the U.S. have adopted ranked-choice voting over the past decade. San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Leandro also use ranked-choice voting.
Deb Otis, director of research and policy for FairVote, an organization that advocates for ranked-choice voting, said the four Bay Area cities that used ranked-choice voting have seen a major uptick in the diversity of their elected officials. She said 61% of elected offices in ranked-choice voting cities are held by people of color, compared to 38% prior to this voting system.
Organizations that support ranked-choice voting—like the nonprofits Fairvote and Common Cause—say that it’s more equitable and ensures more voters have a say in who runs the city. This is because primary elections tend to have lower turnout which may result in an older and whiter electorate deciding which candidates will advance to the fall general election. Ranked-choice also saves money for the city by getting rid of the need for a primary. And supporters say ranked-choice can reduce negativity in campaigns because candidates have an incentive to convince voters who might favor another candidate that they would be a good second or third choice.
Groups that oppose ranked-choice and have campaigned against it in several states mostly include conservative think tanks and nonprofits like the Heritage Foundation and Foundation for Government Accountability. These groups argue that it’s a “plot” by Democrats and progressives to “rig” elections and that “ranked-choice voting requires that legitimate voters’ ballots be thrown in the trash when no candidate receives a majority of the vote.”
The Alameda County Democratic Party approved a resolution last week opposing any attempts to roll back ranked-choice voting. The resolution states that since its implementation, Oakland has seen an increase in voter participation and a more diverse electorate, including Oakland’s first three women mayors.
Sean Dugar, a member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, said the attempt to strike ranked-choice voting is “very disappointing.”
“They’re taking their lead from MAGA Republicans: if you don’t like the outcome of an election, you throw out the system,” Dugar said. “That’s exactly what they’re trying to do.”
Dugar and other ranked-choice supporters have acknowledged problems with Oakland’s system. Dugar previously noted that the overvote rate in the 2022 mayoral election was much higher than the national average. Overvotes occur when a voter fills in too many bubbles on their ballot, making a clear error that can invalidate their vote.
Helen Hutchison, a member of the Oakland League of Women Voters, said the Alameda County Registrar of Voters as well as community groups have not done an adequate job educating the public about ranked-choice voting. Hutchison, who was speaking in her personal capacity, also noted that it didn’t help that the registrar made errors during the 2022 election.
“When things get really close, like they were in the mayoral election, people wonder about the system, which I understand,” Hutchison said. “There needs to be a lot better communication about how counting is going and what the process is.”
Wyatt insisted that the traditional voting system is a fairer and simpler way to elect local leaders.
“I’m for one person, one vote,” Wyatt said.
