A paean to Ranked Choice Voting

To be honest, I was not a huge fan of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) when I first heard of it. I still don't think it is the best system – I prefer SCORE voting. But RCV is really showing its strength as the 2025 NYC Mayoral primary field shapes up. Thanks to RCV, I think there's a good chance Eric Adams will be defeated.

Here's how it is playing out. There are a lot of good reasons to prefer someone besides Adams. They aren't pertinent to this column but I'll link to some when I have the chance. But three established progressives have entered the race: Brad Lander, Zellnor Myrie and Scott Stringer [who I will refer to collectively as LMS}. Let's consider how this would have played out in a normal primary and lets suppose that 60% of the primary electorate prefers any of LMS to Adams.[^1]

In a normal primary, if all three competed, they'd split the 60% non-Adams voters and Adams would win easily with 40%. So, they would need to work to convince each other not to enter the race. Maybe one of them wouldn't but then the two that remained in the race would have incentives to disparage the other-non-Adams candidate to consolidate the Adams opposition behind them. It is very unlikely either would be successful.

With RCV, LMS can say in unison:
"Here's why I am the best candidate"
"Here's why Adams is bad"
"Put me first and vote for the other two of LMS as #2 and #3"

Rather than have incentives for LMS to push each other down, they can actually work cooperatively-ish. Of course, they need to promote themselves but they will have reasons NOT to alienate each other.

It also makes things much easier and more pleasant from a voter's perspective. Voters will not have to agonize over "I like M best but I think L has a better chance of winning". They can just rank M #1 and L #2. If indeed L has more support, then M will get eliminated and their vote will shift to L. Second, the tone of the campaign will be more positive. Yes, there will be a lot of, well-deserved, Adams-bashing. But LMS will not be fighting among themselves. It is actually a good think that there are three qualified candidates because it means there will be a chorus of people appealing to different constituencies. Turnout, especially anti-Adams turnout is likely to be higher.

ENDNOTES:
1: Someday, if I persist with this, I'll learn how to do footnotes in Ghost, and maybe even have a better Theme. But not today.
2: The percentage opposing Adams (which I posited to be 60%) is not fixed. And the number that really matters is what the percentage is of those who actually vote. I think the RCV dynamic will result in a campaign that increases the anti-Adams votes and increases the turnout. [^3].
3: NYC is a one-party town (notwithstanding the fact that we had 20 straight years of Republican mayors). So, when I say "electorate" I mean people who are registered Democrats. It would be great if they allowed everyone to vote in primaries as some states do.
4: You may ask, didn't RCV help Adams last time. My answer is two-fold. First, NO, it didn't. RCV actually helped Garcia a lot, just not enough for her to win. She was behind Adams 20% to 30% in the first round but lost only 49.6 to 50.4 when other candidates had been knocked out. Second: whether RCV is a good system is not measured by whether it elected the "right" person or not but by whether it reflects the voters wishes.