The New York City Mayor's Race and Ranked Choice Chaos

It's been more than two weeks since New York City Democrats voted for mayor, but only last night did the AP called the primary election for Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. We are very proud to have worked for Ray McGuire, the business leader turned candidate who put jobs and the city's economy at the center of the public debate.

The reason for the delayed result? Chaos at the city's board of elections. Last week, the board released and then retracted interim results, admitting they had mistakenly included 135,000 "test votes" in their tally. These test votes were part of a dry run of the city's ranked choice voting system, which is being used for the first time this year.

Ranked choice voting (RCV) was under pressure before the test vote fiasco. A lawsuit from a handful of New York City Council members last year argued the system would disenfranchise voters of color, and in the election's final days, Eric Adams described a ranked-choice partnership between two competitors as an effort at voter suppression.

These points aren't the central problems for RCV, however. The lawsuit was thrown out and the voter suppression charge struck us a campaign tactic above all else.

What is a problem is that the case for ranked choice voting hinges on voters getting smart enough on the field of candidates to cast votes for multiple people in order of preference. That's not realistic, especially in a municipal election in an expensive media market like New York.

Until we commit as a society to making it easier for Americans engage in civic affairs – and that means changes in how we approach education, policy, politics, voting – efforts like ranked choice voting will add Rube Goldberg complexity to a system that requires deeper change. Deeper change might include, for example, getting rid of off-cycle elections. Holding state and municipal elections on a different calendar than congressional and presidential is a voter suppression scheme in its own right.