Overview:
This explainer from THE CITY breaks down how ranked selection voting works in NYC primaries, what it adjustments, and why it issues. With voters heading to the polls this June, the information outlines key dates, widespread questions and what to anticipate this election season.
This information was up to date in January 2025 and was first revealed in January 2021. In case you have questions on voting or metropolis elections, ask us at ask@thecity.nyc with the topic line “Election.”
Rachel Holliday Smith, THE CITY newsroom.
For the previous few election cycles, New York Metropolis voters have used ranked selection voting, which was permitted by 73% of voters in 2019 to vote in native primaries.
Voters will use ranked selection voting (RCV) as soon as once more within the June 24, 2025 main for many of the workplaces on their ballots, with one necessary exception: RCV is used solely for municipal elections like Metropolis Council, however not in district legal professional races, that are technically state workplaces. This 12 months, DAs are on the ballot in Manhattan and Brooklyn: Alvin Bragg and Eric Gonzalez are each up for reelection.
Like within the 2021 mayoral main, there are more likely to be contests this 12 months with lengthy lists of candidates the place ranked choice-related pacts might emerge. That 12 months, for instance, Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang fashioned a late alliance encouraging their respective supporters to rank the opposite one “second” on the poll for mayor.
There possible shall be extra offers like that this 12 months as every one of many Metropolis Council’s 51 seats is on the poll. Candidates can even be working for comptroller, public advocate and borough president.
Once more, ranked selection is used just for primaries, not normal elections; come November, we’ll return to utilizing conventional, top-choice-only voting.
Right here’s what it’s essential to know earlier than heading to the polls:
What’s ranked selection voting, and the way does it work?
As a substitute of selecting just one favourite candidate, voters rank as much as 5 candidates in every race.
If one candidate will get greater than 50% of the first-place votes, that individual wins. If no candidate reaches that majority, nevertheless, as an alternative of an costly run-off election between the highest two vote-getters, the ranked-choice methodology kinds out the best-preferred candidate for the most individuals.
In case your high decide has the fewest first-choice votes amongst all voters, that candidate is eradicated from the race, and all of these voters’ second-choice picks are counted up. That course of continues, with one candidate eliminated every spherical, till one candidate has greater than half of the first-place votes.
Right here’s what the vote tally utilizing ranked selection regarded like for the mayoral main in 2021, when now-Mayor Eric Adams got here out on high within the eighth spherical of voting. Click on “play the animation” under:
Right here’s a proof of how the method works in less than 90 seconds by Minnesota Public Radio forward of the 2013 mayoral race in Minneapolis. Voters there approved the use of ranked selection voting in 2006.
Listed here are a number of extra good sources for details about ranked selection voting:
Why use ranked selection voting? What does it change?
Whereas the adjustments on the bodily poll are small, the implications for candidates and elections are large.
The system favors candidates who’re extra broadly supported within the voters, and analysis has proven ranked selection voting tends to make campaigns less negative and encourages extra women and nonwhite candidates to run. In 2021 as ranked selection rolled out in New York, the Metropolis Council noticed a majority of women for the primary time ever.
The tactic additionally saves taxpayer cash by eliminating the necessity for runoff elections.
How has ranked selection labored out in NYC’s elections thus far?
The primary large check for RCV within the metropolis occurred throughout the 2021 main season and, total, experts say it went smoothly. It continued to have detractors, nevertheless — together with now-mayor Adams — who claimed {that a} lack of schooling in regards to the new system disenfranchised non-English-speaking and older voters.
Adams received the 2021 main after eight rounds of ranked selection vote tabulations. He obtained 30.7% of first-round ballots, however in the end prevailed with about 8,400 votes — or roughly one share level of all votes solid — greater than former metropolis Sanitation Commissioner Garcia.
A lawsuit difficult RCV’s use in metropolis elections was not successful, and an effort to repeal the election methodology has not moved ahead.
One in every of RCV’s targets is to provide voters extra selections, and increase what number of poll picks affect the ultimate end result. In that manner, the voting methodology seems to be a hit.
After the 2021 main, the civic group Residents Union found that slightly below 15% of voters throughout town had inactive or “exhausted” ballots, which means that every one candidates chosen by a voter have been eradicated within the ultimate spherical of ranked selection voting.
By comparability, in 2013’s Democratic mayoral main, 33% voters solid ballots for candidates who didn’t make it to the highest two spots. The lower in exhausted ballots held true for nearly each race within the main, in keeping with the evaluation.
What else ought to I find out about ranked selection voting?
Readers such as you requested our newsroom 63 questions on RCV throughout the 2021 election and we spoke to voting specialists and RCV advocates to answer the most common queries.
That information contains solutions to questions like:
- Do I’ve to select my high 5, or can I simply decide one candidate?
- What occurs if I skip a rating?
- Which candidates profit probably the most from RCV?
- And: If I hate a candidate, ought to they be my final rank, or left off the record utterly?
The reply to that final query, from Sean Dugar – then the schooling marketing campaign program director at Rank the Vote — is nice to remember for all metropolis voters:
“By no means vote for somebody you hate,” Dugar stated.
“We prefer to say: the primary selection is the candidate you like. Your second selection is the candidate that you just like. Your third and fourth selection is the candidate you want barely much less. And your fifth selection is the candidate you possibly can stand,” he added.
Right here’s a great way to consider it: You actually don’t like orange soda. In case your buddy was going to the shop and requested you what sort of drink you need, you would possibly inform them to select up a lime seltzer, and in the event that they don’t have lime seltzer, to get a root beer, or iced tea or apple juice. However you’d by no means inform them to get you an orange soda if all these different selections aren’t on the market.
“Should you don’t need that individual in workplace, you don’t vote for them,” Dugar stated.
Further reporting by Divya Murthy and Rachel Kahn.