After N.Y.C. tests new way of voting, other cities may follow
NEW YORK — The most high-profile experiment in ranked-choice voting in U.S. historyjust took place in New YorkCity. Thereviews are mixed. Hundreds of thousands of voters ranked up to five candidates on their ballots in the Democratic primary for mayor, and many were glad to have that option. Others found the system confusing or wished they had been more strategic in making their choices.
Someelected officials want to scrap the system, because they believe it may disenfranchise Black voters, among others. But for now, it appears, ranked-choice voting is here to stay.
Eric Adams, the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary, saw his lead over the second-place candidate shrink from 75,000 votes to only7,197 after ranked choices werecounted, and he attacked two of his rivals for campaigning together in the race’s final daysto try to beat him.
One of Mr. Adams’ allies, Council Member I. Daneek Miller, of Queens, is promoting a bill that would let New Yorkers decide whether they want to keep ranked-choice voting, although there does not appear to be enough supportfor it to be approved.
“You see these large leads dwindle because of voter rankings,” Mr. Miller said. “Is this an exercise in mediocrity? Do we want fourthand fifth-place votes deciding leadership?”
This year’s primary was the first time New York had used ranked-choice voting in acitywide race. The system is used in other countries and in cities like San Francisco, but it had never been attempted in a larger U.S. city. Other places, including Washington, D.C., the Seattle area and Lansing, Mich., couldadopt the system.
Christina Henderson, a member of Washington’s City Council and a supporter of a bill that would bring ranked-choice there, said the New York election showed the system’s benefits, including the diversity of winning candidates like Mr. Adams, who is likely to become the city’ssecond Black mayor.
“Races are more dynamic and collegial with genuine policy debates supplanting negative campaign tactics,” Ms.Henderson said.
The new system changed how some candidates campaigned for mayor, encouraging them to appeal to their rivals’ supporters to earn a spot on their ballots. By striking a late alliance with Andrew Yang, for example, Kathryn Garcia won over many of his voters.
But a major snafu by the city’s perennially dysfunctional Board of Elections — accidentally releasing an inaccurate vote count — could undermine confidence in the system. And although Mr. Adams won the primary, his allies have raised concerns that ranked-choice voting could hurt Black voters who might choose only one candidate. Some Black leaders sued last year to try to stop the system from being introduced.
Mr. Adams himself has criticized how ranked-choice voting was rolled out, but he does not want to eliminate it. He said it was an obstacle for some voters and called for moreeducation about it.
“Your New York Times readers, your Wall Street Journal readers and all of those that had the ability to analyze all this information, it’sfine for them,” Mr. Adams said in a radio interview on WNYC last week. “But that’s not the reality when English is a second language, that’s not the reality for 85- and 90year-old voters who are trying to navigate the process. Every new barrier you put in place, you’re going to lose voters in the process.”
The system’s supporters have defended it vigorously, arguing that voters did understand how to use it. Maya Wiley, who finished third in the Democratic mayoral primary, wrote a piece for The Washington Post in support ofthe system despite losing.
Ranked-choice advocates say the system helped improve the fortunes of female andminority candidates. The City Council appears poised to have its first-ever female majority, and women finished second and third in the mayoralprimary.
“We won’t let anyone take away the people’s voice and go back to the old system where costly, low-turnout runoff elections actually disenfranchised people,” said Debbie Louis, the lead organizer for Rank the Vote NYC, a group that supports the votingsystem.
Some voters did not like the new approach. Rebecca Yhisreal, 61, who lives in West Harlem, said she voted for Mr. Adams first and ranked three other candidates on her ballot. But she said she preferred the old system, under which New Yorkers voted for one candidate and if no one got more than 40% of the vote, the top two finishers would go to a runoff.
“It was kind of confusing,” she said. “I would rather it go backto how it was.”
William Brown, a retiree who lives in Harlem, said the crowded mayoral ballot, which had 13 Democrats, had made it difficult for him to make sense of each candidate’s positions and to determine how to rank those he liked best. He said he had ranked Raymond McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, first, and had forgotten how many other candidates he ranked.
“It’s unfair,” he said. “You have to take the time to understand it, but there’s too many candidates. It’s detrimental.”
Mr. Miller, who is in his final year in the City Council and testified at a state Assembly hearing last week with other critics of ranked-choice voting, said residents in his Southeast Queens district had complained to him about the new system. It encouraged voters to focus on the candidates’ race rather than onissues, he said.
Under ranked-choice voting, if no candidate gets more than 50% of first-choice votes on an initial tally, the process moves to an elimination round method. The lowestpolling candidates are eliminated, with their votes reallocated to whichever remaining candidates those voters ranked next. The process continues until one candidate has morethan 50% of the vote.
Some voters expressed regret that they had not been more shrewd by picking between Mr. Adams or Ms. Garcia so that their ballot helped decide the winner. More than 140,000 ballots were “exhausted,” meaning they did not name either finalist and weretherefore thrown out.
Those ballots represented nearly 15% of the 940,000 votes cast, a higher rate than in some other ranked-choice elections. In London Breed’s 2018 mayoral victory in San Francisco, about 8.5% of ballots were exhausted. Advocates for ranked-choice voting saythe share of exhausted ballots should decrease as New Yorkers become more familiarwith the system.
Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat in his second term, said he wanted to see more detailed voter data before deciding whether the system was a success. He said he would be concerned if the data showed wealthy voters ranking five candidates and poorer ones notdoing so.
“What I don’t want to see is a system that enfranchises some people and not others and we need the research to really tell what happened here,”Mr. de Blasio said.
The city’s Board of Elections is planning to release detailed ballot information in the coming weeks that will reveal which neighborhoods tookfull advantage of rankedchoice voting. The information, known as the cast-vote record, will not be made public until recounts are completed in two unresolved City Councilraces.