In New York City\u2019s recent primary a new system of voting was implemented: ranked choice voting (RCV).\u00a0 RCV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, instead of limiting their decision to one candidate.\u00a0 The new system was put in place after New York City voters overwhelmingly approved it (73.5%) for municipal and primary elections in 2019.\u00a0 RCV is rare in the U.S., existing in several municipalities as well as in the states of Maine and Alaska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s how the NYC RCV system works: Voters can choose to list up to five candidates in descending preference. The New York City Board of Elections (BOE) then tabulates the votes. A candidate who receives more than 50% of the vote wins. If no candidate exceeds 50% in the first round of voting, counting continues. In the second round, the candidate who received the fewest votes is dropped from consideration and that candidate\u2019s votes are applied to the remaining candidates. For the voters whose candidate was eliminated, their votes are redistributed based on their second choices. If no candidate still garners 50%, then a third round is calculated, eliminating the candidate with the fewest votes, and redistributing those votes to the remaining candidates. The process continues until one candidate\u2019s vote count exceeds 50%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proponents of the new system successfully argued that RCV gives voters more choices, that candidates are more likely to cooperate since they would not want to alienate other candidates\u2019 voters. Why? Because if they are not a voter\u2019s first preference they would want to be listed as a second or third choice since that may still help them to win the election. Lastly, proponents argued that the RCV system would save money. Prior to this new system, if no citywide candidate received 40% of the vote, a runoff election was held \u2013 and running elections costs money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How did the new system perform? There is good and bad news. The good news is that despite fears it would be too complicated, New Yorkers overwhelmingly found it easy and straightforward to rank. Primary turnout hit its highest levels in more than 20 years. The mayoral race attracted a wide range of high-quality candidates, and quite a lot of media attention. The race was interesting because it was uncertain and competitive \u2014 and it was uncertain and competitive in large part because of ranked-choice voting. Dynamic, competitive races lead to higher turnout. More voters are engaged, and more votes matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And according to a voter survey, New Yorkers liked the system. In a survey jointly released by Common Cause\/NY and Rank the Vote NYC, and based on exit polling conducted by Edison Research, 77% of New Yorkers want RCV in future local elections, 95% of voters found their ballot simple to complete, and 78% said they understood RCV extremely or very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the negative side, the agency responsible for running the RCV election \u2013 New York City\u2019s Board of Elections \u2013 has so far done a poor job. The City\u2019s BOE, which was established decades ago, has been long criticized as incompetent and too focused on the needs of the two major political parties, not the needs of voters. The criticisms originate with the structure of the BOE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NYC BOE \u2013 like all of the state\u2019s local elections agencies \u2013 is run jointly by the two major political parties. The commissioners are usually chosen due to their partisan loyalty, not their ability to competently run elections. Of course, that does not mean that all elections commissioners and board staff cannot do a competent job \u2013 there are some that are quite skilled \u2013 but that the process of appointing them is far too likely to reward partisan loyalists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result of this system that rewards the party faithful \u2013 not necessarily what\u2019s best for elections administration \u2013 polls across the state have been plagued with errors, incompetence, and too often illegalities. New York City has not been immune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, in 2016 the NYC BOE mistakenly purged 200,000 people from voting rolls, which led to some voters waiting in four-hour lines to cast their ballots. In 2020, the BOE sent out 100,000 absentee ballots to voters, but with incorrect names and addresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this year\u2019s June Democratic primary, the BOE included 135,000 test ballots in the preliminary unofficial release of ranked-choice voting results. After the error was identified, the BOE took down the faulty tabulations. But the damage was done \u2013 giving RCV opponents an excuse to criticize the new system itself and cast doubt on the election results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, the BOE error in reporting the preliminary count has nothing to do with RCV. BOE\u2019s mistake was the result of human error. It\u2019s incomprehensibly incompetent, but it\u2019s not a failure of RCV. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
New Yorkers are still waiting for the final results of the June Democratic primary election \u2013 absentee ballots still need to be counted and those RCV votes tabulated. But until then, and despite the underwhelming performance of the NYC BOE, ranked-choice voting has passed its first test \u2013 City voters liked it, it reduced elections costs, and may even have begun to move toward a less toxic election cycle. For other municipalities with run-off elections, it serves as a positive option. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In New York City\u2019s recent primary a new system of voting was implemented: ranked choice voting (RCV).\u00a0 RCV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, instead of limiting their decision to one candidate.\u00a0 The new system was put in place after New York City voters overwhelmingly approved it (73.5%) for municipal and primary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2578"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2581,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2578\/revisions\/2581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}