Irvine Voters Will Decide Whether to Adopt Ranked-Choice Voting

Irvine voters will decide on November 3, 2026, whether the city should move toward ranked-choice voting in future mayoral and City Council elections. The proposed change would apply to elections held after January 1, 2028, but a yes vote would not guarantee that ranked-choice voting is used immediately.

What the measure would change

Irvine currently uses plurality voting. Under that system, the candidate who receives the most votes wins, even if no candidate earns more than half of the vote.

The proposed ordinance would direct the city to use ranked-choice voting for Irvine mayoral and City Council elections occurring after January 1, 2028. Voters would be allowed to rank at least five candidates in order of preference.

Instead of counting only first-choice votes, election officials would conduct the count in rounds. If no candidate has a majority of continuing votes, the candidate with the fewest votes would be eliminated. Ballots cast for that candidate would then be transferred to the next-ranked continuing candidate on each ballot. The process would continue until one candidate receives a majority of continuing votes.

Why approval would not mean an immediate switch

The proposed ordinance includes technical and financial conditions that would have to be met before the city implements the system. Those conditions include the availability of election equipment, reporting systems, and sufficient capacity in the Orange County election system.

The ordinance also sets an additional-cost limit equal to 0.23% of Irvine’s general-fund budget. That figure is a threshold written into the proposed ordinance, not an estimate of what implementation would actually cost.

As a result, approval would establish a framework and direction for ranked-choice voting while leaving practical questions unresolved. Irvine and Orange County would still need to determine whether the required technology, tabulation, reporting, and administrative processes are feasible within the ordinance’s conditions.

What has happened so far

The Irvine City Council took the ballot-measure action on July 14, 2026. The city posted its voter notice on July 15. That notice included the proposed ballot language and set July 27 as the deadline for submitting direct ballot arguments.

With that deadline now passed, the next major step is the November 3 election. The measure remains a proposed voter-directed change until voters decide whether to approve it.

What Irvine voters are deciding

A yes vote would direct Irvine toward replacing its current plurality system with ranked-choice voting for city mayoral and City Council elections, subject to the ordinance’s feasibility and cost conditions. A no vote would leave the existing voting system in place unless the city later takes another action.

The central questions for voters are how they view the ranking and round-by-round counting process, and whether the city can meet the ordinance’s technology, Orange County capacity, reporting, and cost requirements. The election will decide the policy direction; implementation details would remain important afterward.

Sources

• City of Irvine Election Information
• LAist Irvine Election Report