Ranked Choice Voting: Lessons in Democracy Reform from New York

In just a few weeks, on June 24, 2025, voters in New York City’s primary elections will use the ranked choice voting (RCV) method to select their parties’ nominees for the general elections later in the fall. This will mark the second time that the residents of America’s largest city will utilize this new system which was adopted in 2019.

In a typical ranked choice voting scenario, when no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes, the least scoring candidate is eliminated and their vote is awarded to their second-choice candidate and the process is repeated until someone scores more than 50 percent of the votes. In New York City, voters are allowed to rank up to five candidates on their ballot.

This system itself has become fodder for partisan disagreement: over the past three years, ten Republican states have banned the use of ranked choice voting in their jurisdictions and at a recent rally in Michigan to mark his first 100 days in office, Donald Trump sternly admonished his supporters never to accept the ranked choice voting method. Earlier, in January 2023, the Republican National Committee (RNC) officially adopted a resolution to oppose ranked choice voting.

The Critics’ Beef with Ranked Choice Voting

A recurring line of attack against ranked choice voting by its critics is the idea that the process creates confusion among the voters, a situation they claim could depress voter turnout, as insufficiently informed voters lose their enthusiasm for participation. Notably, this sentiment seems to be shared by both the official GOP and the smattering of Democrats who have publicly opposed the voting system, including local New York City politicians like Laurie Cumbo and John Liu, who expressed their criticism in the lead-up to the adoption of ranked choice voting for the city’s primaries in 2019. Indeed, during that adoption debate, Sid Davidoff, a prominent lawyer and lobbyist in New York City, further stoked the flames of opposition by reportedly deriding ranked choice voting as “truly trying to fix a system that wasn’t broken.”

The Empirical Evidence from New York City

However, the idea that ranked choice voting will confuse the voters and thereby depress their enthusiasm for the process has been clearly dispelled by the empirical evidence from the 2021 municipal primaries in New York City. In short, the fears have turned out to be rather overblown. According to figures released in May 2022 by the New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) in its 2021-2022 , voter participation surged by 29 percent in the mayoral election of 2021 at nearly one million voters compared to the 772,000 figure in 2013 (when ranked choice voting did not exist) with turnout increasing in 41 out of 44 contested races. Also, nearly 90 percent of city voters ranked more than one candidate in at least one race in their primary ballot.

During a forum on ranked choice voting, Joan Alexander-Bakriddin, the president of the Brooklyn chapter of the NAACP, acknowledged the voter confusion problem but noted that the use of ranked choice voting in 2021 not only increased voter turnout but also resulted in greater diversity in the people elected to office. For instance, women now hold a majority of seats on the 51-member New York City Council, thanks to the 2021 election. On voter confusion, Alexander-Bakridden suggested that the problem could be remedied by a “significant investment in outreach” measures to address such factors as an aging voter pool that was accustomed to the old method of voting as well as the language barriers that exist among the highly diverse New York City electorate.

The other less-talked-about benefit of ranked choice voting is the cost savings from not having to conduct run-off elections in a ranked choice voting regime. Thus, just because none of the candidates in an election scored more than 50 percent on the first ballot does not thereby doom the electorate to return to the polls for a re-do between the two top vote-getters. Nor will the said two top candidates have to go back on the hustings in search of run-off votes, as happens in a typical election as we know it. The “one-and-done” feature of ranked choice voting is a win-win for the candidates, the voters, and the public till. Eric Friedman, a senior public affairs official at the New York City Campaign Finance Board and moderator of the aforementioned forum, noted in remarks after the event that the cost savings from not holding a run-off were considerable. He also noted that the one-off election feature of ranked choice voting helped avoid the danger of voter fatigue, which could arise from having to ask voters to come back and vote again.

However, the City should not consider the job complete. In the interest of securing optimal results for healthier politics New York City should also adopting open primaries as a complement to ranked choice voting.

Conclusion

For all its benefits, it is worth noting that ranked choice voting is currently in use for various local races in just 52 jurisdictions across the country, with Alaska and Maine alone using it for statewide races. However, the positive experience of New Yorkers with ranked choice voting is particularly instructive given New York City’s position as the largest city and one of the most diverse in an increasingly diversifying country. Accordingly, the ranked choice voting formula has certainly earned the right to be tested more broadly in American elections, beginning with expanding its use to cover more than just New York City’s primary elections.

Thus, it well behooves democracy reform advocates in the progressive community nationwide to promote this promising electoral innovation across the country to give more Americans an opportunity to assess its benefits for themselves. Chances are they will like what they see.

Carl Unegbu, a lawyer and journalist, serves as a vice chair of the New York Chapter of the American Constitution Society. He can be reached at ocarls@yahoo.com.

Democracy and Voting