Spare a thought for our elections.
New York City has a bizarre primary election runoff system. If no candidate in a primary for citywide office gets 40 percent of the vote, we have a runoff three weeks later between the top two finishers. These tend to be extremely low turnout affairs—in 2013, just 7 percent of eligible voters participated in the Democratic primary runoff for public advocate. That’s a problem, especially when so many races in New York City are basically decided in the primary.
We can ensure broader participation and eliminate the need for these runoffs completely with Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). With RCV, voters rank candidates in order of preference, and if no one gets a majority of the vote, the candidates with the fewest first choices get eliminated and the votes for them transferred to second choices until there’s a clear winner. The 2019 Charter Revision Commission is considering adding RCV to the November 2019 ballot, and they should. We shouldn’t have to go to the polls a few weeks after the primary when RCV will give us a majority winner in a single election. With higher turnout in those primaries, we can get more New Yorkers voting when it matters most.
—Alexander A. Egan
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