Fix election law
Lawrence backs cash-saving city reforms
J-Law wants to change the voting law.
Academy Award-winning actors Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Douglas endorsed a push to overhaul the city’s primary and special elections.
The stars on Monday joined eight other influencers in backing “ranked choice voting,” which would allow voters to sort their top 5 candidates for city office and save taxpayers millions from costly runoff elections.
“The current system of elections incentivizes candidates to appeal to voters’ frustration instead of their aspirations,” Lawrence, Douglas and others wrote in a letter to the Charter Revision Commission on Monday. “Ranked choice voting is a simple, proven and worthy model that encourages candidates to build broad support from across the community, and empowers voters to cast their ballot based on their hopes, not their fears.”
The Charter Revision Commission wants ranked choice voting on the ballot in November, when voters can enact or scrap proposed changes to the municipal charter.
The city uses two election structures now — a traditional “plurality” system where the candidate with the majority of the vote wins and a runoff for primaries for the three citywide offices of mayor, public advocate and controller. Runoffs are triggered when no candidate gets 40% of the votes cast in those citywide primaries, and the two contenders with the highest number of votes get to square off in a second election.
Runoff elections are pricey — and few people vote in them. The 2013 public advocate runoff cost taxpayers more than $11 million, with voter turnout dropping a whopping 62% compared to the primary.
Under ranked choice voters list candidates by preference and if no one candidate is ranked first by a majority of voters, then they are successively eliminated until two remain in a final “round,” essentially simulating a runoff election.
“It saves the city money by eliminating costly runoff elections, and produces consensus candidates,” Lawrence, Douglas and others wrote in the letter, organized by good-government group Common Cause New York and RepresentUS an anti-corruption campaign.
“Ranked choice voting gives New Yorkers more options, so that our elected officials truly represent us. Voters deserve candidates who work harder to win more votes from more diverse communities,” Douglas said in a statement to the Daily News. “That’s how we’ll build a democracy that reflects the true diversity of ideas and backgrounds that make New York.”
Lawrence lives in the city and is a registered voter. Douglas currently resides in Westchester with his wife, actress Catherine ZetaJones, but his Further Films has a city office.