The ruling is in — Huntington Beach’s election system is changing. 

Unfortunately, that change is against the will of the voters. 

Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin ruled last month that Huntington Beach has to adopt a new voting system, and November is the deadline. 

Until now, the city has used an “at-large” system for City Council elections. Every seat on the council was voted on by every voter living within the city’s boundaries.

But Judge Griffin said that violates the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA), ostensibly because it makes it harder for minorities to win. He ordered the city to adopt ranked-choice voting instead.

In ranked-choice voting, voters rank several candidates in order of preference, rather than just choosing one per seat. It is more complicated than traditional voting.

The problem? For starters, ranked-choice voting was never approved by Huntington Beach voters. 

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The judge’s decision should trouble anyone who believes election rules belong to the people — and not the bench.

The lawsuit was filed in the name of resident Victor Valladares, but argued by Kevin Shenkman, a Malibu attorney who has spent more than a decade specializing in exactly this kind of lawsuit against California cities.

The CVRA lets winning plaintiffs recover attorneys’ fees from the cities they sue, turning this litigation into a business most cities would rather settle than risk losing.

Huntington Beach fought the case. But the city’s legal team was outlitigated by a specialist who does this for a living.

That doesn’t make the decision right.

After the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling against racial gerrymandering in the Louisiana v. Callais decision, even Judge Griffin admitted that the case against Huntington Beach would have “failed miserably.” 

But he justified his ruling for ranked-choice voting based on the idea that California’s own CVRA rests on independent state constitutional authority.

Griffin also said he chose ranked-choice voting because it would be “less drastic” than dividing the city up into individual districts.

In addition, Orange County’s registrar says the county’s voting system can’t even run a ranked-choice election yet. 

Not only would ranked-choice voting require new machinery, but the new system would also require elections for all seven council seats at once, cutting short three or four current council members’ terms in the process.

Ranked-choice voting hasn’t earned this confidence.

In 2024, voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Oregon voted against ballot measures to adopt ranked-choice voting; Alaska kept it by roughly 1%. Even the nonpartisan Institute for Responsive Government has acknowledged that ranked-choice voting “is not a one-size-fits-all solution.”

In the meantime, this November, California voters will also decide on Proposition 39, which requires voter ID, citizenship-verification reporting and improved maintenance of voter rolls.

These aren’t fringe ideas.

An October 2024 Gallup poll found 84% of Americans favored photo ID at the polls, and 83% favored proof of citizenship for first-time registration.

California trusts its voters to weigh in on reforms with that kind of support.

Yet one local judge has decided Huntington Beach voters can’t be trusted to decide how their own council is elected.

If ranked-choice voting is truly the better system, its advocates should win that argument at the ballot box.

Instead, this case was built and won by a specialist litigator against outmatched city lawyers, decided by one judge working through unsettled law — with Huntington Beach’s own voters never in the room.

Ranked-choice voting remains a matter of active public debate — not settled law or settled public opinion — and certainly not something that should be imposed by judicial decree.

Election rules derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. When that consent is replaced by a courtroom order, however carefully reasoned, something essential to self-government is lost — in Huntington Beach, and in every city that could be next.

Ken Cuccinelli II is the national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative.