Here
are some recent updates from the Democratic primary for New York City mayor:
Several rival candidates, for the first time in the history of the nation’s
largest city, have “cross-endorsed” each other. One of them, the democratic
socialist Zohran Mamdani, encouraged his supporters to give money to a more moderate opponent,
Adrienne Adams. And people are heading to the polls early at double the rate they did last time they voted for
mayor.
Some
political observers see this as chaotic, problematic, and even antidemocratic. But at a time when Americans are frustrated with their democracy and the amount of money flooding elections, an alternate
read is that a collection of wonky changes by New York—most prominently, ranked-choice
voting—is forging a potentially exemplary new election system, one that could
show the way for big blue cities afflicted with electoral apathy and cynicism. That’s
no small feat for a city long plagued by election dysfunction, suffocating machine politics, and terrible turnout.
In
recent years, the city has implemented early voting, greenlit even more generous
public matching funds for candidates, and put stricter limits on spending and
donating, but the most attention-grabbing part of the NYC model is ranked choice,
which allows people to list up to five candidates in their preferred order for
most local primaries. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes,
then the last-place candidate is eliminated. Second-place votes for that
eliminated candidate now become first-place votes, and we count again until
someone gets a majority.
This
means that “every individual vote has more power,” said Tim Hunter, press
secretary of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, an independent city
agency that aims to make elections fairer and more popular.
That’s
because ranked choice, unlike a winner-takes-all system, doesn’t discourage
voters from choosing their preferred candidate even if that person is polling
poorly. Ranked choice also diminishes the impact of vote splitting, which is
especially relevant in this year’s Democratic primary where one candidate’s
name recognition and war chest—that of Andrew Cuomo, the dynastic former
governor who resigned from office in 2021 after
allegations of sexual harassment—far exceeds the other candidates’, most of whom
are running to his left. In a typical election that featured the current field,
the non-Cuomo vote would be severely diluted, with candidates squabbling until
the last minute about who should drop out.
This
year’s primary gives the non-front-runners at least a potential chance. It’s the
second time ranked choice is being used for an NYC mayoral campaign, following
Mayor Eric Adams’s election in 2021, and there are early indications that the
system brings other advantages.
“The
goal was, and it’s working, to minimize polarization and negative campaigning,”
said Sal Albanese, a member of the charter review commission that placed ranked
choice on the ballot in New York in 2019. “You don’t have to spend your
time attacking another candidate because you want to be able to generate
support from that other candidate’s supporters.” During Albanese’s second run
for mayor in 2013, when it was winner-take-all, his strategy was to go after
other candidates “to differentiate myself.”
This
time around, there is not much negativity between the non-Cuomo opponents. But
one of the more intriguing criticisms of ranked-choice voting—which is set to soon
debut in Washington, D.C., and is already used in dozens of jurisdictions—portrays this as
a flaw in the system. Writing in The Atlantic last week, in a piece
titled “New York Is Not a Democracy,” Annie Lowrey argued that if candidates aren’t
incentivized to attack each other, “that could make it harder for voters to
make informed decisions.”
The
New York example suggests otherwise. Rather than spending their time trying to
wound their opponents, the candidates are promoting an impressively wide range of
creative policies, from fast and free buses to universal after-school programs and housing on city-owned golf courses. The new system has also
unleashed cross-endorsing, where two candidates tell their supporters to rank
both of them. It’s something that has happened multiple times in the mayoral
race, most prominently in the case of Mamdani, who has cross-endorsed both City
Comptroller Brad Lander and Michael Blake, a former state assemblyman.
Moreover,
contra Lowrey, this alliance did not stop Blake from virally chiding Mamdani for remarks about the
phrase “globalize the intifada.” It’s far from the only example of chirping among the aligned. Candidates
still politely explain why they are different—but now there’s a new way for
voters to see where opponents are the same.
“You
can put a message together around it,” said Keith Powers, who chairs a City Council committee pertaining to elections and is currently running for
Manhattan borough president. Two opponents, for example, can team up to
highlight their advocacy for affordability and housing.
Another
common criticism of ranked choice is that it’s overly burdensome. As NY1’s
Errol Louis memorably put it to The New Yorker, if
you had to “rank your choice of whether we have Indian, Chinese, pizza, vegan,
or steakhouse. Put them in ranked order. Who’s got time for that?” Lowrey also
raised the related concern about voters who don’t use the full slate: “In 2021,
Black, Latino, and Asian voters were less likely than non-Latino white voters
to rank a full slate of candidates, in effect curtailing their electoral power.”
But
it’s New Yorkers’ right to choose as few candidates as they please. Plus, 2021
was their first experience with ranked choice, which does take some getting
used to. A 2021–2022 voter analysis report
from the NYCCFB suggested that more alliances and coalitions—which did indeed
blossom this year—could “supply natural alternatives for [voters’] 2nd, 3rd,
4th, or 5th choice.” More broadly, NYC voters were already embracing the system
during that first year: 88.3 percent of primary voters ranked multiple candidates
for at least one office.
This
embrace of the slate may not be so surprising when you consider that many of
the candidates have pretty similar positions on truly meaningful municipal
matters like mayoral control of schools, housing policy, and even policing.
Where the candidates diverge, it is often on a detailed level, such that voters
might like the cut of a few jibs. When you can choose to elevate a bespoke
group of preferred leaders, maybe you don’t need to make agonizing binary
decisions based on the things that candidates do take uncompromising,
binary stances on—especially issues that aren’t under a mayor’s control, like
Israel’s war on Gaza and Iran or state-level bail reform.
Beyond
ranked choice, other elements of New York’s system have had a longer time to
evolve. Early voting began in NYC in 2019 after state approval. The jury
is still out on whether it alone can boost NYC’s abysmal
turnout, but the initiative has been popular and convenient, particularly for older and new voters.
The
city’s public campaign finance program is much more established, having been
approved by ballot referendum in 1988, after a series of corruption
scandals. Such scandals have not exactly been wiped out (see: why Eric Adams is running as an
independent and
not in this year’s Democratic primary). But the public funds program,
which increased to an 8-to-1 match on small-dollar donations after a 2018 charter
amendment, has been credited with breeding more competition and even diversity.
The
program, which includes thresholds, strict contribution limits, and lots of
audits, can still make it easier for new or lesser-known candidates to compete:
As of this spring, 101 candidates received public funds for this cycle’s city
races, says Marina Pino, counsel at the elections and government program at the
Brennan Center. Of those, 59 candidates had not received public funds in prior
elections.
When
$100 is nearly as good as $1,000, new candidates don’t necessarily need to spend
all their time trying to get a sit-down with a big developer or Wall Street
whiz. They are incentivized to raise from within their district (a requirement,
to a certain level), and freed to spend more time on tasks like door knocking.
This
mayoral cycle has again shown the potential of these realignments. Leading
contenders Mamdani, Cuomo, and Lander have touted that they were able to stop
fundraising entirely, as they’d raked in enough donations—plus public matching
funds—to hit the $8 million spending cap. This is striking, particularly in
Mamdani’s case given that he is a 33-year-old state legislator known by relatively
few New Yorkers until this year. Impressively, the majority of his and Lander’s
donations came in below $175.
This
allows candidates to fund ads to get their message out and compete against
opponents—in this primary’s case, one opponent—who have enormous outside
support: Fix the City, the Cuomo-boosting super PAC, has raked in more than $24 million from the likes of Michael
Bloomberg, DoorDash, and Alex Karp of Palantir Technologies.
That
kind of cash is very difficult to combat. But the city election system has at
least provided some attempts at oversight. There are strict transparency rules
requiring, for example, that paid communications like mailers show a group’s top three donors.
And city regulators have tried to cut down on improper coordination between
outside groups and campaigns. (The Campaign Finance Board amended a rule on this subject in 2024, and
months later alleged that Cuomo coordinated with a super PAC anyway. The board
ended up withholding nearly three-quarters of a million
dollars in public matching funds in response.)
Even
still, spending by outside groups may play the dominant role in this race,
which some political observers—and candidates—see as a key area of concern. “Something’s got
to be done about the super PACs,” said Albanese, the former mayoral candidate.
“It’s eroding public financing.” One problem, he added, is that penalties for
big-money wrongdoing get “implemented after the election.”
And
as with other election issues in New York, any reforms tend to take years to happen,
if at all. Which would mean another tweak to the city’s ever-evolving elections.
The post New York’s Election System Isn’t Chaotic. It’s Democracy Done Right. appeared first on New Republic.
