Voters in Oakland, California, are going to the polls on Tuesday to pick a new mayor in an election that could reshape the struggling city. The final results, though, may not be known for several days.

That’s because the election will be decided by ranked choice voting. Under the system, voters rank candidates from most to least preferred. In multiple rounds of tallying, the candidate who receives the fewest votes is eliminated, and their supporters’ votes are carried over to their next preferred pick until there is a winner.

Recommended Stories

• RNC chairman says Trump 'tickdown' in support still puts him ahead of Democrats
• Democrat Yadira Caraveo launches bid for rematch against Gabe Evans in Colorado
• Stephen A. Smith goes to Washington?

While nine candidates are on the ballot, there are two front-runners: former Rep. Barbara Lee and former City Council Member Loren Taylor. Lee and Taylor have scooped up key endorsements, raised the most money, and polled the highest.

Despite this, the other seven candidates could play key roles in determining the victor, especially in a close race. 

Lee has spent the last three decades as a congresswoman representing Oakland, and voters are familiar with seeing her name on the ballot. Her slogan for the last 20 years has been, “Barbara Lee speaks for me.”

Taylor has spent several months out-raising Lee, tapping into voter frustration with the status quo, and pitching his vision of a new Oakland. 

“It’s not about whether or not we appreciate her service in Congress,” Taylor said about Lee. “It’s about what we need right now to fix Oakland’s problems — and particularly with the urgency that Oaklanders need.”

The next mayor of Oakland must immediately deal with a sprawling homelessness crisis, a serious public safety problem, and a massive budget deficit borne from years of fiscal mismanagement. 

The candidates on Tuesday’s ballot are running to finish former Mayor Sheng Thao’s term. 

Sixty percent of Oaklanders voted to oust Thao last November. She has since been federally indicted on bribery, corruption, and fraud charges. She was the nation’s first mayor of a major city to be voted out of office midterm in over a decade.

Lee was against the recall and has pledged to unite the city; Taylor has promised to fix it. 

The race has been largely seen as Lee’s to lose. The 78-year-old career politician came out of retirement to run for mayor after an open letter by a group of self-described “business, labor, community, government, and faith leaders who rarely agree on things” said “extraordinary times” brought them together and implored her to get in the race and keep the city from turning to shambles. 

Recent polling has shown Taylor could pull off a major upset.

However, as Taylor personally knows, when ranked choice voting is involved, there are different levels of strategy at play. 

In the 2022 mayoral contest, Taylor narrowly lost to Thao despite beating her in the first-place round. After all of the tabulations were made, he lost by 677 votes. 

“I’m confident I would have won,” he said about the race. 

Since then, he has been a vocal opponent of the voting system, and his campaign staffer, Pamela Ferrun, runs a committee attempting to repeal it. 

Supporters say the system accurately identifies the candidate with the strongest support, weeds out wasted votes, and eliminates the need for multiple, costly elections.  

Taylor, unlike Lee, hasn’t deployed a ranked choice strategy for the race. However, his more centrist stance could score him support from backers of candidate Mindy Pechenuk, a pro-Trump conservative, who has urged her followers to vote for him in the second-place slot. Another candidate, Elizabeth Swaney, has also expressed support for Taylor. 

OAKLAND MAYORAL CANDIDATES DELIVER CLOSING ARGUMENTS TO UNDECIDED VOTERS

“Why choose just one? Ranked-choice voting lets you support multiple candidates- @lorenmtaylor and I both running for Mayor of Oakland in the Special Election, and we both say: #VOTE this Taco Tuesday, April 15, also Election Day! #RankedChoice #Oakland #TacoTime #mayor,” she posted on X.

Lee released a video last week outlining a voting strategy for her supporters. In it, she tells viewers to rank her in the top slot, followed by candidates Renia Webb, Suz Robinson, Swaney, and Cristina Grappo in the second through fifth-place spots on their ballots.