Ranked-Choice Voting: What New Yorkers Need To Know

In 2021, New Yorkers faced a novel kind of ballot: Instead of picking one candidate, they were asked to rank five. Four years later, many New Yorkers are still lost on how it works.

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)—NYC’s system to revolutionize voting practices across the five boroughs—allows New Yorkers to choose more than one candidate, letting voters rank their top five choices in order of preference in all city primary and special elections. The races where it applies includes City Council, borough president, comptroller, public advocate, and mayor.

Though RCV voting strengthens democracy by giving voters a wider variety of options, even after multiple election cycles many voters are still learning how the process works, unclear on what many label as a complicated system.

By definition, RCV lets voters rank up to five candidates for a given office. If a candidate receives over 50 percent of all first-choice votes, they win the office outright. However, in the likely event that no one reaches that threshold, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, with voters who selected that person as their first choice having their votes transferred to their second-choice candidate.

This newer system helps reduce the impacts of “vote-splitting” and ensures that more voices are reflected.

This process continues in the subsequent rounds, when the lowest-performing candidate is eliminated each time, their votes being reallocated. RCV culminates when one candidate earns the majority of votes and is declared the winner.

RCV does not apply to general elections, presidential elections, or races involving state and federal offices.

Proponents claim that the RCV voting system encourages more civil campaigning, as candidates must not appeal solely to their immediate voter base but also to voters who might loosely support them as second- or third-place options. Additionally, as the lowest-ranked candidates are eliminated and votes are subsequently distributed, RCV reduces the likelihood of runoff elections.

New York City’s first significant test of ranked-choice voting came in the 2021 mayoral race, where voters ranked 13 Democratic candidates on their ballots. The race went through eight rounds of voting, with lower candidates being eliminated and their votes being redistributed, before Eric Adams eventually won the race with slightly more than 50 percent of the final-round ballot. The entire process took around two weeks to finalize, highlighting some of the complexities of RCV.

Even after multiple election cycles, officials and RCV advocates emphasize that voter education remains essential to making ranked-choice voting work. Though RCV offers increased flexibility, many voters question correctly filling out their ballots. For example, some do not understand that they cannot rank the same candidate five times. Many others are unaware that they do not need to rank five candidates for their ballot to be valid: They could vote for only one, or several, or five.

New York City has launched outreach programs to address these issues, including videos, workshops, sample ballots, and multilingual resources accessible across the five boroughs. The NYC Campaign Finance Board also offers interactive tools and an FAQ on vote. NYC, where they walk voters through every step of the process.

As New York City continues to expand and develop ranked-choice voting, officials believe that ongoing education will be essential to confirming that voters have more choices and the tools to use them effectively.