Ranked-Choice Voting Comes to NYC

Election confusion: more powerful than cyberattacks. Source: Meritalk

On November 5th, 2019, New York City residents will find ranked choice voting as Question 1 on their city election ballots. For many New Yorkers, this will come as a surprise.

Despite signs posted in subways and at bus stops, the question of ranked choice voting has drawn either blank or quizzical stares from all New Yorkers I have asked about it.

Ranked choice voting means that instead of only casting your vote for a single candidate, you can rank each candidate by order of preference. Votes are then tallied in a series of rounds, until an overall winner emerges.

Ranked choice voting is common in many other countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Scotland. It is also already used within the United States, as is the case in the state of Maine and in cities such as San Francisco, Santa Fe, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Cambridge, MA, among others. It is also coming up for a vote (though not a ranked one) in a dozen or so other cities across the country.

Not all ranked choice voting methods are equal. The two main methods are called Condorcet and Borda, both in honor of 18th century French mathematicians.

With both methods, votes are tallied, the contender with the fewest votes is dropped from the race and their second choice votes are distributed amongst the remaining candidates. This goes on until all votes are split between the final two candidates, one of whom will presumably hold a majority.

The main difference in methods revolves around how much each option is worth. In the Condorcet system, each option has the same value, whereas the Borda method assigns points to each candidate, based on whether that candidate is a first, second, third, etc. choice. The Heisman Trophy and the MLB’s MVP award are determined by a Borda count election process.

Even in a two-party system, the redistribution of votes for minor candidates can decide a winner, as shown in the example below.

Although not specifically stated, the proposed ranked choice voting system for NYC appears to use the Condorcet count.

Ranked choice voting seeks to avoid situations in which a candidate wins an election without overall popular support. This happens in the current plurality system, when you have, for instance, four candidates and three of them essentially split the opposition vote against the fourth. If a majority of voters are opposed to candidate #4, but divided on their preferred candidate, then ranking their votes can avoid rule by minority.

The system isn’t perfect. Even with ranked choice voting, you can end up electing a candidate who fails to win the majority of votes, if not enough voters give their votes to lower-ranked candidates.

One key argument for ranked choice voting is that is incentivizes candidates to create a broader appeal, especially during primaries, rather than pandering to a base that typically adheres to a party’s more extreme views. By this argument, campaigns will not be able to afford to be as negative as they often are now.

One argument against ranked choice voting, as reported in City and State New York, is that it would ” lead to candidates without strong ideological stances in order to be an appealing second choice for the most possible voters.”

Given the nature of the “strong ideological stances” held by many politicians, I question whether this should count as a point against ranked choice voting.

You can delve into more of the pros and cons here.

The organization behind the measure is Common Cause New York, a non-partisan group dedicated to a variety of good governance measures, including election reform, increased government accountability and more equitable public representation.

I spoke with Jesse Cerrotti, a representative of Common Cause, about my perceived lack of public awareness regarding Question 1 and how they were managing the public awareness and education campaigns.

Cerrotti said that Common Cause representatives have been attending community boards, political clubs and rallies, as well as canvassing religious and senior centers. He added that a particularly low expected turnout in the November election means that resources are best spent on groups with statistically higher numbers of active voters.

Common Cause does plan to engage wider audiences somewhat as the election nears. One of their plans is to attend watching parties for the upcoming democratic national debates, after which they will hold mock ranked choice votes on the debate winners.

Their decision to focus on those most likely to vote underscores a persistent problem in American politics.

Lacking mandatory voting, or even time off to go and vote, the US has frequently shown a greater motivation towards protesting leaders than electing them. Although with the months-long protests in Hong Kong ongoing, even our motivation to protest appears to fall short. At the national level, the US regularly sees less than 60% voter turnout. In 2018, New York state witnessed its highest voter turnout in 24 years…at a piddling 49%. With so few people even bothering to vote at all, the question of how we vote can feel largely abstract.

For better or worse, however, the question will not be abstract for New Yorkers, come November 5th. If passed, ranked choice voting may markedly alter the future of New York politics. For now, its chances of passing appear to be up to those most-likely-to-vote few, who are, shall we say, targeted for education.

Changing how an electoral system works is a fairly big deal. Question 1 on NYC’s upcoming ballot deserves not just your vote, but your informed vote. Share this post and read the more in-depth articles it links to to learn more about the topic.

Most importantly, go and vote.