A broad coalition, including some unlikely allies, gathered on the steps of Federal Hall Thursday to trumpet their support for ranked-choice voting, the first of five proposed changes to the City Charter that voters will be asked to accept or reject on the ballot this November.
For voters, the change is pretty straightforward. Under the proposal, instead of picking just one candidate, voters will have the option to rank up to five candidates in order of preference in the primary and special elections for Mayor, Public Advocate, Comptroller, Borough President and City Council, starting in January of 2021.
Listen to Brigid Bergin explain ranked choice voting with Jami Floyd on WNYC's All Things Considered:
It’s how those votes are counted that can be a bit of a head scratcher. If one candidate receives a majority of the vote, then it’s all done and a winner is declared. But if no one wins 51 percent, then the results will be re-tallied: the last place candidate will be eliminated and the votes from those ballots will be redistributed starting with the voters second choice. This process will repeat until one candidate has a majority of the votes and a winner can be declared.
Watch this video. It helps, I promise.
Proponents argue that ranked-choice voting will eliminate costly run-off elections and ensure elected officials are chosen by a broader base of support, as opposed to our current system in which multi-candidate races divide the vote so much that a candidate can win with just a fraction of support from the electorate.
“All too often frequently what we find is that the winner in these crowded fields is chosen with much less than a 50 percent majority,” said Susan Lerner, head of Common Cause New York and the leader of the campaign to pass ranked choice voting. “That’s not as healthy for our democracy as it needs to be.”
Take the recent special election for Public Advocate where 17 candidates appeared on the ballot. Ultimately, Jumaane Williams won the race with just a third of the votes cast. Still he’s a supporter of ranked choice voting, arguing it will change the way candidates run for office.
“It encourages positive campaigning because people want to be people’s second choice,” Williams said, adding “In the places where this has happened, it has allowed candidates of color and women to be voted into office.”
Currently, ranked choice voting is used 13 municipalities across the country including Cambridge (since the 1940s), Minneapolis (since 2009), and San Francisco (since 2004), according to FairVote, a nonpartisan election reform advocacy group. It’s also used in Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.
In New York City, 2021 will be a juggernaut of an election. Of the 51 members of the City Council, 35 will be term-limited out of office. There will also be open seats for mayor, comptroller, and four of the five borough presidents. (Note: public advocate and the Queens borough president are off cycle because of special elections and will LIKELY have an incumbent running for re-election)
For all those open seats, the Campaign Finance Board predicts at least 500 candidates will run for office, which translates to up to 12 candidates vying for each City Council seat. In 2018, a study by Common Cause/NY found that 64 percent of multi-candidate primaries were won with less than 50 percent of the vote, and not a single race with 4 or more candidates produced a majority winner.
“We’ve really got to put the burden on the candidates to get out beyond their core base group and get to know what the issues are in the broader constituency,” said Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group that is part of the coalition supporting ranked-choice voting. “Business issues aren’t, frankly, being well represented these days and we think this is a shot at getting them better represented in the public dialogue.”
If voters approve this change, advocates acknowledge this will also pose a new challenge for the long-struggling New York City Board of Elections, which found itself under siege in 2018 when chaos reigned at the polls.
The city uses the same election equipment and vendor, Election Systems & Software, as the state of Maine which plans to use ranked-choice voting in the 2020 presidential primary, meaning the vendor will have some experience. Still, the board has to implement its own new procedures and protocols.
Although no one from the City Board of Elections was on hand for Thursday’s event supporting ranked choice voting, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, whose legislation spurred the latest Charter Revision Commission, said she spoke with executive director Michael Ryan ahead of the press conference.
“I said, ‘Are you going to pull this off?’ And he said, ‘If we have to, we will,” Brewer said.
In an interview, Ryan noted that ranked-choice voting requires some technical changes to the board’s software that need approval and testing from the state. But he offered an assurance that his agency would do what needs to be done.
“The City Board will work closely with the State Board of Elections to ensure that ranked-choice voting is implemented in New York City,” said Ryan.
To cast your vote on ranked choice and other proposed revisions to the city charter, you have a choice: with early voting up and running, voters can cast ballots either from October 26th to November 3rd or on Election Day, November 5th.
