In June 2026, Californians will each vote for one of 61 candidates for governor. The top two will advance to the November election. With so many candidates, polls suggest that nobody will receive more than 20% of the total vote, and the top two may get less than 35% combined – wasting two-thirds of Californians’ votes on candidates who won’t be on the November ballot.
Everyone knows this is crazy. Voters are forced to figure out who is most popular — not who they truly want.
It doesn’t have to be this way. If voters could rank the candidates they support instead, they could vote for the person they truly want first, without the fear that they could waste their vote. Candidates who are similar ideologically would have an incentive to tell voters what they have in common, instead of attacking each other. Most important, the winner would have the support of the majority of voters.
Try this ballot to see what voting could be like if we had Ranked-Choice Voting in this situation. We also have a Lieutenant Governor poll with a more reasonable number of candidates.
Tip: Rank as many as you want — you do not have to rank all 61! Including several leading candidates on your list will help make sure your vote helps elect a winner.
Ranked-choice voting allows voters to conveniently find a strongly supported winner from among many candidates, with minimal worries about “wasting” votes on weak candidates or “splitting” votes between similar candidates. Here’s how it works:
- Each ballot is counted toward its highest-ranked remaining candidate.
- Does a candidate have a majority of counted votes?
No: The last-place candidate is eliminated; go to step 1.
Yes: The majority winner wins the election.
Tips:
- Your lower choices won’t hurt the chances of your higher choices.
- If you don’t rank a candidate, it means you’d rather not have your vote count than have it count toward that candidate.