Leading mayoral candidate warns new voting system as efforts to delay it

A leading mayoral candidate has joined a growing movement to block the launch of a voting system that ranks political candidates, warning it will ‘deprive’ black and Latin American voters and rest in the hands of a council notoriously dysfunctional electoral system.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams warned the implementation of tiered choice voting this week, as he prepared to announce his own candidacy to succeed Bill de Blasio for mayor of New York.

“Everyone knows that with every layer you put in the process, you lose black and brown voters and turnout,” Adams said in an interview Tuesday. “We cannot deprive these voters of their rights.”

The leading supporter of the policy, which voters overwhelmingly backed in 2019, Adams has expressed a change of heart as lawmakers consider legislation to stop him and a civil rights organization considers legal action. Many of those who opposed the change after it was proposed last year are now citing the pandemic and the city’s perennial Election Council errors as justifications for the delay.

Some opponents are aligned with the machines of the city’s Democratic Party, whose power over municipal elections would likely be diminished by a tiered-choice vote, in which voters list candidates in order of preference rather than pick just one. .

Adams lambasted the Elections Council for its slow efforts to educate voters around the new policy – although an official involved in the deployment defended his intention to wait until the end of the 2020 presidential election to begin to sensitize voters, so as not to confuse voters.

“The more barriers and levels you put in place, you’re going to hurt those who have English as a second language and those who come from minority communities,” Adams said.

Ranked choice voting has long been a goal of government reform groups who believe it would discourage negative campaigning while avoiding both a low turnout runoff and electing candidates who win with only a small group of voters. Supporters say studies from California have shown that tiered choice voting increases the chances of non-white candidates.

Next year, New Yorkers will be able to rank up to five people in the city’s primary. If none receives more than 50 percent, the last finalist is disqualified and voters who chose that person will have their next choice counted. Ranking continues until a winner is declared.

A commission called by City Council Chairman Corey Johnson to study the city’s charter concluded last year that the policy would eliminate the effect of spoiler races while encouraging candidates to campaign beyond their base sucked in order to obtain second place status.

Johnson was running for mayor at the time, and his relatives say he thought it would help his candidacy.

“It is clear that New Yorkers thirst for a more inclusive democracy, and disaffected communities in particular can truly be empowered by their vote in a choice-by-rank election,” Rose Pierre-Louis, who sits to the executive board of the Committee for Ranked-Choice Voting NYC, said in a prepared statement.

Pierre-Louis also supports the candidacy of city controller Scott Stringer, whose victory strategy is based on the new voting system.

She predicted that voters would be able to adjust in time for the mayor’s primary next June, just as they did for the advent of early voting this month, and urged the city not to not delay.

However, several plans are underway to postpone the roll-out of priority voting, which is expected to take effect in an out-of-cycle election for a city council seat in February.

City Council’s Black, Latino and Asian caucus are now asking Johnson to ‘indefinitely postpone’ the introduction of the voting system, arguing the Election Office is unable to handle the deployment on time, a letter says. reported signed by 15 group members and sent to Johnson on Friday.

“We have no confidence in the BOE’s ability to acclimate voters to a system of scale and complexity of ranked choice voting, especially in a compressed time frame already constrained by the pandemic, given its appalling record of performance, ”co-chairs I. Daneek Miller and Adrienne Adams wrote. Both represent Southeast Queens, an area rich in engaged voters and an Eric Adams has been courting for years.

The letter accuses the council of “embarrassing incidents which many New Yorkers of color rightly perceive to be akin to voter suppression,” namely a series of scrambles in the distribution of mail-in ballots this fall and hours of waiting at polling stations open early. voters. Elderly people and people with disabilities sometimes received “confused advice” from election officials, they said.

Miller said he was pushing the speaker to introduce legislation to delay the deployment. He believed the structure would be similar to that of the 2008 Council bill to strike down term limits, which voters approved in a previous voting referendum.

Despite spearheading the initiative, Johnson declined to comment on efforts to delay it.

Others, who scoff at hierarchical choice voting, weigh on the possibility of legal action.

Kirsten John Foy, who founded the civil rights organization Arc of Justice and previously worked for Reverend Al Sharpton, is among those considering filing a lawsuit.

“This is the wrong environment to overthrow a known and reliable – albeit imperfect – system with an unknown, untested and therefore unreliable system,” Foy said in an interview.

He called the arguments that the tiered choice voting helps black and Latino candidates “a shell game” and said the policy would encourage candidates to focus more on the horse racing of politics.

“If someone is elected who did not have the support of the majority, how do you justify it?” he added.

A lawsuit would likely invoke federal voting rights law and argue that candidates favored by communities of color do less well in the new system, effectively diluting their votes, according to Mark Peters, a lawyer who was approached by Foy and sits on its board of directors. These types of lawsuits typically involve months of preparation and detailed study of past elections here or in other cities where rank-picking is already in use, such as San Francisco, which elected its first black mayor with this. system.

A ranked choice would weaken the power of political parties, which appoint the 10 commissioners of the city’s Election Council and play a role in monitoring the results of local elections. They often select party loyalists to run for office, help them finance their campaigns, and are known to try to sack opponents in the ballot.

It is not lost on the county machines that this would weaken their grip on the process.

“From my perspective, this is done to undermine the party system,” said Patrick Jenkins, a political consultant with ties to the Bronx and Queens Democratic parties, in a recent interview.

“African Americans fought in this city, were the backbone of the Democratic Party and we worked hard to achieve representation and equality of the party structure,” he said. “We’ve spent all these years trying to play by the rules.”

Four of the city’s five Democratic organizations are led by black lawmakers, the result of decades of political loyalty among voters that often determine the results of city races.

Some black candidates questioned Jenkins’ argument.

“They are using race as a narrative in an attempt to blur reality which is to say that it is an advantage for voters, candidates of color and candidates who are against the establishment,” Brandon said. West, a candidate backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. for the city council.

Stringer categorically disagreed with measures to stop him.

“Is he in favor of supporting a reform measure that voters have already voted for? You bet, ”Stringer spokesperson Tyrone Stevens said.

Another candidate for mayor, Maya Wiley, has been a supporter of politics, with a laundry list of local officials.

The Election Office says its machines can handle the new voting system, and this week issued an invitation to tender for contractors who could provide software to automatically compile votes. The council plans to formalize this contract in January.

Despite concerns that the city is running out of time to educate voters and candidates, awareness has already started.

Rank the Vote NYC, an umbrella organization, has organized over 20 training sessions for candidates and staff. Another outreach service will begin educating voters on December 2.

The city’s campaign finance council, which is required to educate voters, said it was on schedule.

“The vote in 2020 was quite confusing for voters. Adding an educational campaign on priority voting, which only applies to municipal elections starting in 2021, would only have added to the confusion, ”said Matt Sollars, spokesperson of the finance council, in a press release.

Shaun Donovan, who is running for mayor, incorporated the choice vote into a 29-page campaign pitch he handed out to potential supporters, which reads: “Shaun’s broad appeal makes him a 2nd. and 3rd natural choice for voters, even when committed to another candidate.