Eureka Ranked-Choice Voting Delayed Again, Now Pushed to 2028

Prospective Eureka candidates sitting in the city's official candidate education workshop Monday got news that upended their assumptions about how November's election would work: ranked-choice voting is off the table again, this time until 2028.

The Humboldt County Office of Elections announced March 24 that the ranked-choice voting rollout for City of Eureka contests, previously scheduled for the November 2026 General Election, will not happen on that timeline. Voters who approved the measure in the fall of 2020 will wait at least another two years to see it in practice.

The delay stems from findings produced by the county's own tabletop exercises. "Our tabletop exercises did exactly what they were designed to do. They showed us what it will take to get this right," said Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Juan P. Cervantes. "We're not going to rush implementation at the expense of systemic integrity."

At the center of the technical gap is Hart InterCivic, the county's voting system vendor, which has not yet completed the ranked-choice voting updates required for its Verity system. Those updates still need to clear a state certification process before the county can deploy them. Hart InterCivic CEO Julie Mathis said the company intends to submit the required updates to the state for certification testing in the first quarter of 2027. "Hart InterCivic is fully committed to Humboldt County's methodical implementation plan," Mathis said. "Our team is actively developing the required ranked choice voting updates for the Verity system, and we stand firmly behind our timeline to submit them for state certification in quarter one of 2027, ensuring a successful rollout in 2028."

That certification timeline makes November 2026 a practical impossibility. City of Eureka contests this fall will instead use standard plurality voting, meaning the candidate with the most votes wins outright. The county announced the change directly to prospective candidates at Monday's workshop, framing the notification as a transparency measure ahead of the formal filing period.

The Elections Office said it has assembled a team of outside experts with experience in ranked-choice rollouts to support implementation alongside its ongoing partnership with Hart InterCivic. The press release noted a list of key partners involved in that effort, though the full list was not released in the materials distributed Monday.

This marks at least the second time Eureka's ranked-choice transition has slipped past an anticipated deadline since voters first approved it more than five years ago. The gap between a voter mandate and a working ballot system now stretches toward nearly a decade from approval to first use.

The next concrete milestone to watch is Hart InterCivic's Q1 2027 certification submission to the state. Until that clears, the 2028 target remains contingent on a vendor and a regulatory process that have yet to complete their respective roles.