RCV Elects Candidates Who Best Reflect the Community’s Values and Priorities
Sacramento’s current election system creates low levels of voter engagement and voter participation. RCV would improve voter engagement and voter participation in a number of ways …
PROBLEM: In Sacramento’s current system, candidates are usually elected in the Primary Election, even though Primaries have extremely low voter turnout.
SOLUTION: With RCV, we could move all decisions to the General Election, where more people vote and diverse voices could be heard.
SACRAMENTO’S CURRENT SYSTEM EXCLUDES MOST VOTERS
Primary Elections have extremely low voter turnout, compared to General Elections. For example, in 2024, the Primary Election turned out barely half as many voters than the General Election.
TOTAL BALLOTS CAST IN THE CITY OF SACRAMENTO: 2024 PRIMARY ELECTION AND GENERAL ELECTION
The “turnout gap” is the difference between number of people who voted in the Primary Election versus the number who voted in the General Election.
In 2024, the “turnout gap” was huge – nearly 100,000 people. But this is actually typical. Sacramento’s “turnout gap” has historically been huge in every election cycle.
TOTAL BALLOTS CAST IN THE CITY OF SACRAMENTO: 2016 TO 2024
The “turnout gap” in Sacramento is reliably large.
Voter turnout in the Primary is not only tiny, it also underrepresents younger voters and non-White voters.
That’s a problem, because three out of every four races for Sacramento’s City Council are decided in the Primary.
Most of the time, a candidate is elected to City Council without ever running in the General Election, where more people vote.
HOW ALL CITY COUNCIL RACES WERE DECIDED IN SACRAMENTO, FROM 2000 TO 2024
So only the small fraction of voters who vote in the Primary is picking the City Council Member in most cases.
Thousands of voters in Sacramento never see a city council race on their ballots.
Is it any wonder Sacramento residents feel disconnected from their local elected representatives?
Ranked Choice Voting can solve this problem.
With RCV, Sacramento could eliminate Primaries for local races and simply allow all the candidates to run in the General Election, where more people vote.
Doing so would include more Sacramentans in the local process and align the outcomes of elections with the wishes of the majority of voters.
RCV enables a wider range of voters to vote, and enables a wider range of candidates to run a viable campaign.
Democracy is strongest when all voices are heard. RCV makes ALL voices heard.
Not only would RCV improve voter participation by moving City Council races to the higher-turnout General Election, but RCV also uniquely motivates candidates to reach out to a wider range of community members. (See Ranked Choice Voting and Participation: Impacts on Deliberative Engagement. Smith, Haley. June 2016).
RCV encourages candidates to consider a wider range of voters because, if a candidate can’t get your vote, they at least want you to mark them as your 2nd choice. This dynamic motivates candidates to reach out to the whole community, instead of catering to their narrower “base” of supporters.
RCV ALSO SOLVES THE “LAME DUCK” PROBLEM.
PROBLEM: Sacramento’s current system often unnecessarily delays the voters’ wishes from being carried out, by almost a year.
SOLUTION: RCV would allow the voters’ choices to go into effect sooner.
When a candidate wins election to City Council outright in the Primary (which can be as early in the year as February), they must still wait until December, another 8 months to get sworn-in and start the job.
In fact, this recently happened twice to Council District 4, in 2020 and again in 2024.
By moving decisions to the November election (the General Election), RCV would eliminate this needless “waiting period.” RCV would let the voters’ wishes go into effect in a timely manner.
RCV ALSO IMPROVES REPRESENTATION BY REDUCING THE ROLE OF MONEY IN POLITICS
PROBLEM: Sacramento’s current system sometimes requires candidates to raise extreme amounts of money to be competitive, screening-out those who aren’t well-connected to high-dollar interest groups.
SOLUTION: RCV would reduce the fundraising burden placed on candidates, enabling a more diverse field of highly qualified candidates to run for office and better represent the community’s values and priorities.
Whenever a candidate wins in the low-turnout Primary, that candidate becomes a City Council member with only a small fraction of the community’s support.
That’s a bad thing and certainly does not carry a mandate. But the flip side isn’t much better.
Here’s why: If more than 2 candidates run, vote splitting occurs and no candidate wins the Primary outright, then Sacramento’s “run-off” system requires the top-two candidates to run again in the General Election eight months later. This means each candidate must fundraise for two campaigns, doubling their reliance on moneyed interests.
HOW ALL CITY COUNCIL RACES WERE DECIDED IN SACRAMENTO, FROM 2000 TO 2024
In Sacramento, on average, a candidate must raise nearly a quarter of a million dollars to run both campaigns.
This is based on data from the previous five election cycles, where the average winner of a run-off had to raise and spend $241,367!
SACRAMENTO CITY COUNCIL’S CAMPAIGN SPENDING: AVERAGE SPENDING, BY EACH CAMPAIGN, FROM 2014 TO 2022
RCV would reduce the fundraising burden on candidates
Cities using RCV don’t need to administer two elections. Instead, their voters select a winner in a single high-turnout election. So with RCV, candidates only need to run once, cutting their demand for campaign contributions roughly in half.
For example, the last five election cycles in Sacramento show a candidate, on average, needs to raise $115,084 to place in the “top two” in a Primary Election. So we can consider $115,084 as roughly the average amount a candidate needs to raise to run a single campaign in Sacramento. Now, compare that to the $241,367 required to run two campaigns.
Over the last five election cycles, the average candidate in Sacramento has needed to raise nearly a quarter of a million dollars to run both campaigns successfully.
RCV would reduce the need for candidates to fundraise because, with RCV, candidates only need to run once, not twice.
By reducing the need for candidates to fundraise, RCV allows candidates to spend more time talking with community members, instead of catering to high-moneyed interests.
It also enables a more diverse field of candidates to run.
This might explain why RCV improves diversity and representation on the campaign trail and in public office.
Cities with RCV have better electoral outcomes for women and people of color. Over the last decade, women have won 48% of all municipal RCV elections. As of April 2020, nearly half of all mayors (46%) and city council seats (49%) decided by RCV are held by women. By comparison, women comprise only 23% of mayors in non-RCV jurisdictions (See In Ranked Choice Elections, Women WIN, by RepresentWomen. 2020.)
Cities that adopted RCV also saw increases in the percentage of candidates of color running for office. The probability of female candidates and female candidates of color winning office also went up. (See The alternative vote: Do changes in single-member voting systems affect descriptive representation of women and minorities?, by Sarah John, Haley Smith, and Elizabeth Zack. 2018.)