De Blasio says NYC may need to ‘reassess’ ranked-choice voting
Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would be wise to “reassess” the ranked-choice voting system if evidence suggests there were racial and class disparities in how voters used the instant runoff during the June primary.
“If it turns out it was utilized well across the board, in all sorts of communities, then I feel good about it,” de Blasio said during a virtual press conference about the city’s new instant-runoff system, under which voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference.
“I like it if there was relative equality in how people utilize their ballots. In other words: if in more privileged and less privileged communities you saw consistent voting one through five, or as close to that as possible, everyone maximizing the power of their ballot.”
“If it turns out, conversely, that we see a real skew, then I think it’s time to reassess, because what I don’t want to see a system that enfranchises some people and not others,” de Blasio said.
“I don’t want a system that disenfranchises one group.”
The ranked-choice voting system, which does away with the need with a generally lower-turnout runoff election, was approved by wide margins by voters in a November 2019 ballot referendum.
A report by the 2019 Charter Review Commission– composed in part by de Blasio appointees– recommended instituting ranked-choice voting. The report notes one benefit of avoiding runoff elections– they have less diverse and more highly educated participants. But the mayor is now saying that’s the same issue with the new system.
Black and white voters made full use of ranked-choice voting at about equal rates, according to exit polling conducted on primary day. Forty-five percent of white voters used all five spots while 43 percent of black voters did, according to the good government group-commissioned survey.
But the poll also found that 25 percent of black voters cast ballots that voted for just one mayoral candidate — more than double the 10 percent of ballots cast by white voters that ranked just one candidate.
“We need the research to really tell what happened here,” de Blasio said. “We don’t have that analysis yet.”
Of the 17 percent of New Yorkers who picked just one candidate, 65 percent told pollsters they were settled on one candidate in the race; just 28 percent of the group said they were unfamiliar with ranked-choice voting.
Rose Pierre-Louis, a member of Rank the Vote NYC’s executive board, was confident data shows no significant disparities among different races on New Yorkers’ ability to use the new instant runoff system.
“New York City voters loved ranked-choice voting and they elected the most diverse City Council in history, as well as the second black mayor of NYC,” she said. “The exit polling showed no difference in understanding among demographic groups because ranking is a simple process.”
De Blasio’s comments on ranked-choice voting come after Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams, for whom the current mayor has recently had kind words, claimed days ahead of the election that fellow mayoral hopefuls Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang campaigning together on Juneteenth represented a deliberate attempt to prevent a black candidate from being elected.
Adams’ backers, including Councilman Daneek Miller, have repeatedly said the ranked-choice system is fundamentally biased against non-white candidates and voters. Miller’s latest criticism of the system came the day after Adams held a 10-point first-choice vote lead, which narrowed as the subsequent results were tabulated.
Miller — along with black Democratic council members Adrienne Adams, Alicka Ampry-Samuel, Robert Cornegy, Laurie Cumbo and Farah Louis — in December sued with the aim of delaying the implementation of ranked-choice voting. A judge shortly after rejected the suit.
De Blasio would need to sign off on legislation proposed by Miller to put ranked-choice voting back on the ballot.
