Fremont City Council had its first meeting on the proposed city charter last week (June 1-7). This includes provisions to give more power to elected officials via longer term limits (3 terms instead of 2, and that’s in addition to any terms incumbents are already serving) and potentially more say in the appointment of department heads. (Coincidentally, all of these are possible under general law statutes and don’t require a charter.)
Conspicuously absent were any recommendations to improve the ability of voters to elect their chosen representatives. In that context it is important to note that almost all the Fremont council members were initially elected without majorities, since up to now, Fremont has employed plurality-based elections without runoffs.
For the current council members, their initial winning votes were:
Teresa Keng, 2018, 45.65%
Desrie Campbell, 2022, 40.38%
Kathy Kimberlin, 2022* (2024), 39.87%
Yang Shao, 2018, 26.22%
Yajing Zhang, 2024, 47.46%
Raymond Liu, 2024, 50.18%
(The district 3 first place finisher with 43.73% in 2022, Jenny Kassan, resigned in 2024 whereupon council appointed the second place finisher Kathy Kimberlin to her current post.)
Once elected, the power of incumbency takes over and officials are usually re-elected with majority margins. If we are giving incumbents extra terms, shouldn’t we make sure they actually have majority support upon assuming power? This is where a charter city actually has an advantage as California law permits charter cities to use Ranked Choice Voting (RCV, aka Instant Runoff Voting).
Alameda County has the equipment to run such elections, since RCV is already used in several other Alameda County cities, in particular Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro and Albany. It is also used in San Francisco and other cities across the US, and statewide in Alaska and Maine.
Some cities use runoff elections to address this problem, but runoffs are costly to the city and have low voter turnout. RCV provides an instant runoff in a single, high-turnout general election and ensures the city council and mayor will be representative of the majority of voters.
There are many other benefits of RCV (helpfully summarized by FairVote at fairvote.org/our-reforms/ranked-choice-voting/). But none matters more than making sure elected city officials actually represent the majority of voters in their jurisdiction. It should be part of any city charter. We the voters should insist on it when the Fremont charter proposal comes up for approval by us.
Andreas Kadavanich
Fremont
