Vote

The November ballot

Ranked-choice voting, four district seats, and the City Auditor.

Week of October 5–11, 2026 · Updated Friday, October 9, 2026 · Source: Berkeley's agenda listing (live)

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Berkeley elects its Mayor, its City Council, its City Auditor and its Rent Board. Three of those four surprise people. If you have only voted in one-mark elections before, the ballot looks different and the strategy genuinely is different.

Ranked-choice voting, properly explained

You rank the candidates in order of preference — first choice, second choice, third choice — instead of picking one and stopping. Rank as many as your ballot gives you room for; the number of columns is set by the county’s ballot layout, so look at the ballot in front of you rather than at a number somebody typed on a website.

How the count runs

1. Every ballot is counted for its first choice. If somebody has more than half of the ballots in play, that is the result and the count is over.
2. If nobody has a majority, the candidate in last place is eliminated. Every ballot that ranked that candidate first is transferred to its next surviving choice — not discarded, not halved, transferred whole.
3. Repeat until one candidate holds a majority of the ballots still in play.

That is the entire mechanism. There is no separate runoff election, because the transfers do that job on election night’s ballots rather than in a second contest a few months later with a third of the turnout.

Why ranking a second choice cannot hurt your first

This is the part people get wrong, so it is worth being exact about.

Your second choice is only ever looked at if your first choice is already out of the race. Not losing. Not trailing. Eliminated. While your first choice is still standing, your ballot counts for them and for nobody else, and the fact that you wrote a second name changes nothing about that.

So the two fears people arrive with are both unfounded:

• “If I rank a long shot first, I waste my vote.” No. If they are eliminated, your ballot moves intact to your second choice. You get to say what you actually think first and still have a say in the outcome. That is the whole point of the system.
• “If I rank a second choice, I am helping them beat my favourite.” No. Your second choice cannot receive your ballot while your favourite is still in the count. Ranking someone second is a statement about what you want if your first choice is gone.

There is one real risk, and it runs the other way:

Leaving the lower rankings blank can cost you a say. If every candidate you ranked is eliminated, your ballot is exhausted — it stops counting, and the final round is decided without you. Filling every ranking you have a genuine opinion about is not a compromise; it is the benefit you are being offered.

Two mechanical notes. Ranking the same candidate first, second and third does not give them three votes — it gives them one, and wastes your other two rankings. And marking two candidates in the same ranking column is an overvote: that ranking cannot be read, so the count skips to your next usable one.

Why it took six years to start

Berkeley voters approved ranked-choice voting in 2004 and the city did not use it at the polls until 2010. That gap was not foot-dragging. The City Charter lets the Council switch to instant-runoff voting only when three conditions are all true at once: the voting equipment can technically do it, the city’s election can still be consolidated with the county’s, and it costs the city nothing extra. Alameda County had to acquire equipment that could count it first.

It is a good illustration of something worth carrying around: in California, a great deal of what a city may do is gated on what the county can administer.

What is actually on your ballot

Berkeley staggers its four-year terms, so a municipal election never replaces the whole government. Roughly half the Council turns over at each one.

• Midterm cycle: City Council districts 1, 4, 7 and 8, plus the City Auditor.
• Presidential cycle: City Council districts 2, 3, 5 and 6, plus the Mayor.

See Council for who holds each seat and when it is next up. Terms run to the end of November in the year shown, so a seat is filled at that November’s election.

The two elected offices most residents miss

The Berkeley Unified School Board is also elected, on its own schedule, and is a separate government from the city — see Bodies. Note that school directors, the Mayor and the Auditor are all elected citywide; only councilmembers are elected by district.

Dates, without the calendar

• Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Registration closes fifteen days before Election Day. Miss it and you can still vote: California offers conditional voter registration right through Election Day itself, at the Registrar’s office or any vote centre. Your ballot counts once the registration is verified.
• Vote-by-mail ballots go to every registered voter, mailed about a month before the election. Early in-person voting runs from then until the day before.
• A mailed ballot counts if it is postmarked by Election Day and arrives within the statutory window afterwards. Drop boxes close at 8 p.m. on Election Day.
• Results are not final on election night. Ranked-choice transfers and late-arriving mail ballots both take time; the Registrar certifies within thirty days of the election. Anything reported before then is a running count, not a result — and in a ranked contest an early first-round lead can genuinely reverse.

Registering, and checking that it worked

• Register online through the California Secretary of State at registertovote.ca.gov, on paper at any library, or at the City Clerk’s office. The county page is here.
• Check your status at voterstatus.sos.ca.gov — worth doing after any move, because a Berkeley move across a district line changes which Council seat you vote for.
• Track your mailed ballot at California’s ballot tracker, which will tell you when it was sent, received and counted, and will tell you if the signature was challenged while there is still time to fix it.
• You need to be a US citizen, 18 or older by Election Day, and a resident of Berkeley.
• Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds can pre-register; the registration activates automatically at 18.
• Ways to vote in Alameda County — vote centres, drop boxes and mail.

How a Berkeley measure gets on the ballot

Two routes, and the difference matters.

• The Council refers it. A majority of the Council can place an ordinance, a tax or a charter amendment on the ballot directly. Most Berkeley measures arrive this way, and the argument happens in the chamber months before you see it.
• Residents petition for it. An initiative or a charter amendment can be qualified by gathering signatures from registered Berkeley voters, with the required number set as a percentage of turnout in a past gubernatorial election and a fixed circulation window. The City Clerk runs the process and the county verifies the signatures.

The city publishes the mechanics rather than this site retyping thresholds that change: local petition guidelines and ballot measures. Note that a charter amendment is a different and harder instrument than an ordinance — district elections in 1986 and ranked-choice voting in 2004 both needed one.

Thinking of running rather than voting? Filing is a county process with a city component: how to run at the Registrar, and candidate information at the city for nomination periods and campaign finance rules.

Where to check candidates

This site does not publish a candidate list, and that is a deliberate refusal rather than an omission. Filings are certified by the county Registrar, not by the city; early press lists change as candidates withdraw, filings are rejected and write-ins appear. A list typed here would be right for a fortnight and wrong for a year, and wrong quietly.

The city’s own material is still worth reading for the things the city genuinely owns: voting information and candidate information — filing requirements, nomination periods, campaign finance rules. And the Secretary of State for anything statewide sharing your ballot.