The New York City Council scrutinized ranked-choice voting at an impassioned, prolonged, and at times tense oversight hearing on Monday, with members grilling the agencies responsible for implementing the new way of choosing elected officials and educating the public about it.
The new voting system is set to take effect next year for primary and special elections for city offices, after voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot referendum in 2019. Ranked-choice voting [RCV] allows voters to pick up to five candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the total, the last place finisher is eliminated. The voters that picked the eliminated candidate will have their second choice counted. That process is repeated until there's a winner. It’s the way voters elect candidates in San Francisco and Minneapolis, among other places.
But with early voting scheduled to begin roughly six weeks from now in the first election to use the ranked-choice system, some Council members—along with at least one mayoral candidate—want the city to delay its implementation, saying that there’s not enough time to stand up an effective public education campaign, especially during a deadly second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While there remains support for the law in the City Council, and a reluctance to overturn the will of voters just a year after it was approved, a majority of Council members at the hearing spoke out against ranked-choice voting altogether, arguing it would lead to voter suppression and disenfranchisement, with a disproportionate impact in Black and brown communities.
“A new tally system invites a level of analysis that can be absolutely intimidating in an already fraught system,” said Councilmember Alicka Ampry-Samuel, who is lead sponsor on a bill that dictates how city agencies should conduct a voter outreach campaign for ranked-choice voting. “Anything less would be voter suppression,” she added.
This is not the first time Council members have raised concerns about ranked-choice voting. Last month, a majority of the members of the Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus sent a letter to Council Speaker Corey Johnson seeking to delay its implementation citing a lack of preparedness by the city BOE and CFB. Johnson, who supported ranked-choice voting last year, has not publicly responded to the letter.
The heads of both the New York City Board of Elections and the Campaign Finance Board appeared at the hearing and testified separately for more than two hours. First up was BOE executive director Michael Ryan, who was criticized by BLA Caucus co-chair I. Daneek Miller for failing to provide written testimony to the Council. Miller said it was emblematic of an ongoing lack of preparedness by the agency. (Ryan noted that the hearing was suddenly moved up to Monday from this coming Friday.)
Preparedness was also a theme for the questions from Councilmember Adrienne Adams, the other BLA Caucus Chair, who pressed him to explain why the city BOE had not acted faster to secure the software it needs to tabulate votes under the new system.
The city BOE issued a request for proposals last month with a deadline for companies to submit their bids by Monday.
Ryan assured the members that the city BOE would be able to carry out its Charter-mandated responsibilities when it comes to RCV, and that the agency would be able to conduct the tallies needed from the system either using new software or a system provided by the same company that makes the city’s voting machines, ES&S.
The first election slated to use ranked-choice voting is the special election on February 2nd, to fill the vacancy in the 24th City Council district, left open when Rory Lancman resigned last month to take a position in the Cuomo administration. Early voting for approximately 90,000 voters would begin on January 23rd. Another special will take place on February 23 to fill the Council seat formerly held by new Queens Borough President Donovan Richards in Far Rockaway. Additional special elections are expected in March.
CFB Executive Director Amy LoPrest testified that her agency has plans to reach the voters in those districts first, through mail and online resources. The agency has budgeted a total of $10 million for a voter outreach campaign, with $2 million dedicated specifically to spreading awareness of ranked-choice voting and $8 million dedicated to a voter guide which will be sent to all eligible voters ahead of the June primary, which will also include more information about the system..
But some Council members said the budget for educating voters about RCV is insufficient, noting that the city invested nearly $40 million for its Census outreach campaign.
Councilmember Kalman Yeger put the situation in blunt terms. “Ranked-choice voting is racist," Yeger said. "It is designed to be racist. It’s intent is to be racist and its result in New York City will be racist. It is designed to prevent minorities from electing their own."
Proponents of the system say exactly the opposite—that ranked-choice voting can actually help women and candidates of color and benefits those who don’t have the backing of the party establishment because it forces all candidates to campaign to all eligible voters.
“I think there’s a misconception that NYC voters -- specifically Black and brown voters -- are not intelligent enough to figure out ranked-choice voting. I take offense to that,” said Council Member Antonio Reynoso, a member of the BLA Caucus who did not sign the letter to the Speaker, at a press conference with proponents ahead of the Council hearing.
As a candidate for Brooklyn Borough president, Reynoso said part of his responsibility is to educate voters. “It is my job to make sure that the people who want to vote for me know exactly how to do that. I believe there will be many folks educating voters and it’s on candidates too. I am confident that it’s going to be a success. I would not want to undo the will of the voters,” he added.
Others criticized the arguments made by opponents of ranked-choice voting as disingenuous, and instead a way for Council members aligned with their county organizations to protect the existing political system.
“It's really just an extension of the machine that they're a part of and the fact that they want to keep control over the electoral process and make it as closed and easy to manipulate as possible,” said Brandon West, the former president of a reform political club called the New Kings Democrats, and a City Council candidate in Brooklyn. West, who works on voting rights issues at the Center for Popular Democracy, was one of the proponents of ranked-choice voting when it was a ballot question in 2019.
Susan Lerner, head of the good government group Common Cause New York, led a broad coalition of supporters who backed ranked-choice voting when it was a ballot measure in 2019. Her organization has conducted dozens of trainings with voters, candidates and community groups since March. She said the BOE already has much of what it needs in place to effectively carry out an election with ranked-choice voting.
At least two mayoral candidates have staked out opposing positions in the debate. Brooklyn Borough president Eric Adams, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor next year who supported the ballot measure in 2019, has more recently raised objections to the voting system.
“I am a supporter of any improvement to voting that leads to greater access to our democratic process—but from my discussions with New Yorkers in lower-income communities of color, I am concerned that not enough education has been done about rank choice voting to ensure a smooth transition to that method so soon,” Adams said in statement.
Another mayoral candidate, Maya Wiley, an outspoken and visible supporter of ranked-choice voting last year, remains steadfast, arguing that ranked-choice voting empowers communities of color and noted that it was supported by the vast majority of voters who turned out in 2019.
“New Yorkers voted for these reforms because under the old system, the votes of people of color and working people were often diluted during run-off elections that had far less engagement in these communities,” Wiley said.
