Across the Bay Area, cities and school districts are facing lawsuits regarding their voting methods.

In the past three years, 20 cities have received lawsuit threat letters under the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA). Under the act, any city challenged for having an election process that locks ethnic minorities out of power can immediately switch to district elections to avoid being sued. However, this solution often does not solve the central problem.

Albany could soon have a chance to show that a different solution is not only possible, but preferable.

Currently, Albany’s City Council and school board are both elected via plurality at large as are most in the Bay Area. The system is simple; voters choose their ideal team for the two or three seats up for election, and the candidates with the most votes win.

But this simple system has several negative consequences that have led political scientists to consistently rank it the worst manner of conducting elections. Plurality at large either ensures that the majority captures the entirety of seats up for election or allows a minority to capture complete control when too many other candidates split the vote.

Either way, political minorities are vastly underrepresented, or they win every seat. Either the majority locks smaller groups out of power, or it is divided and loses.

In Albany, the imbalance of this system means that even though Asian Americans make up a quarter of the population, only one has been elected to the City Council in the past 25 years, putting the city at risk of a CVRA lawsuit. If threatened, Albany could be forced to change to district elections, as were, for example, Half Moon Bay, Windsor, Pacifica, Martinez, Richmond and San Rafael.

But, in a small city like Albany where none of the three largest ethnic and racial minorities are close to a majority of voters in any potential district, this solution would not solve the problem that puts us at risk in the first place.

Furthermore, districts would subdivide Albany’s 6,500 active voters into five enclaves. Results from other California cities of similar size that have moved to district elections indicate such a change would likely double to triple Albany’s already high number of uncontested elections.

Instead, Voter Choice Albany is working to qualify a ballot initiative putting ranked-choice voting on the November ballot. Ranked choice allows voters to rank their preferred candidates; instead of electing whoever gets the most votes on the first ballot — whether that winner has 50% of the vote or 5% — the alternative choices are considered.

The core feature of ranked choice is the transferable vote; if no one meets the threshold to be elected in the first round and your first choice candidate comes in last, your vote is transferred to your second choice. And, if your candidate wins in the first round but there are other seats to be filled, votes over the threshold required are passed on to those voters’ second choice.

This process continues, electing and eliminating candidates according to the preferences of a voter’s ballot, until all seats have been filled. By transferring votes based on the preferences of voters, ranked choice eliminates the need for strategic voting, better represents the entirety of the electorate, and ensures that candidates will not be voted into power without the support of a significant portion of the voters.

In a city like Albany, with a geographical spread of ethnic minorities, ranked choice also offers a far better chance to address CVRA violations than district voting by reducing the likelihood of one view, or block of voters, capturing all the seats.

Unfortunately, despite the unanimous recommendation of the Albany school board and the Albany Charter Review Committee, a slim majority of the City Council has kept ranked choice from going before the people.

Voter Choice Albany will soon start gathering signatures needed to put ranked choice on the ballot this November. We urge supportive Albany residents to join us at our signature gathering kickoff on Feb. 15.  For more information please email us at voterchoicealbany@gmail.com.

Aaron Tiedemann and Andrew Tang are organizers for Voter Choice Albany.