Early Voting Kicks off in 1 Month! Vote Yes on Ranked Choice Voting

NEW YORK, NY (09/26/2019) (readMedia)-- Today Common Cause/NY and Voting Rights Activists rallied in front of the Manhattan BOE one month before early voting begins for the first time in New York State. Select polls will be open October 26th-November 3rd, but voters can also vote on Election Day, November 5th. Early Voting, signed into law this January, gives voters nine days before an election to cast their ballot. Find your poll-site and learn more at voteearly.org

CommonCause/NY also rallied for Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) which will be question 1 on the November ballot. RCV gives voters the option to rank their top five candidates in local New York City primary and special elections. If voters still want to vote for just one candidate, they can. A candidate who collects a majority of the vote, fifty percent plus one, wins. If there's no majority winner, the last place candidate will be eliminated and voters who ranked that candidate first have their ballots instantly counted for their second choice preference. The process is repeated until there's a final pair with a majority winner. Learn more at rankthevotenyc.org

"New Yorkers deserve elections that lift up our voices, and push candidates to campaign better. Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is the simple solution that puts power back in the hands of the people where it belongs," said Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY. "And because New York now has Early Voting more people will have more time to cast their ballot."

Last Thursday a diverse coalition of supporters including dozens of elected officials, nonprofits, unions, and advocates kicked off the campaign for Ranked Choice Voting on the steps of Federal Hall.

Background:

Other cities like San Francisco, Minneapolis and Santa Fe, and countries like Australia and Ireland have implemented ranked choice voting to great success. Maine will use ranked choice voting to select their presidential nominee.

Most candidates win crowded elections in New York City by campaigning to their base, and fail to get a majority. With ranked choice voting, candidates will be forced to campaign to the broader electorate in the hopes of being ranked second or third. Ranked choice voting helps create consensus candidates with majority support.

In the last three election cycles in New York City, sixty-three percent of multi-candidate primaries were won with less than 50% of the vote, 30% were won with less than 40%, and nearly 10% were won with less than 30%. In 2021, close to 70% of the New York City Council members, and all five borough presidents, the Comptroller and Mayor, will be term limited. The New York City Campaign Finance Board is already anticipating the opening of at least 500 campaign committees, which averages to 12 candidates per race.

In early April, Common Cause/NY released a new analysis that builds on a previous report -- The Case for Ranked Choice Voting in New York City -- which quantifies the prevalence of multi-candidate primaries in the last three election cycles in NYC.