In the News
January 20, 2023
The article in Gotham Gazette covers the ranked-choice voting system in New York City and mentions RepresentWomen's research. Read the excerpt below:
An exit poll conducted by Common Cause/NY and Rank the Vote NYC right after the election found that 78% of New Yorkers said they understood RCV extremely or very well and 77% said they want RCV in future elections.
Voting rights and election advocates overwhelmingly support RCV, which they say encourages candidates to campaign more broadly outside their base and gives voters greater choice and voice in elections. Far from disenfranchising communities of color, studies have found that RCV has helped them have greater influence and that it has helped elect minority candidates to office in other jurisdictions while also boosting women. The city’s first RCV election led to the first-ever female majority in the City Council, with 31 out of 51 seats occupied by women.
Council Member Shekar Krishnan is among the new members who were elected in 2021, and the first South Asian representative on the Council. “[T]he reality is that we are seeing the most representative and diverse City Council that we’ve ever had in its history, and turnout that is far higher than it’s been in many other previous years, which to me says that ranked-choice voting really worked,” he said in an NY1 interview in July 2021, after winning his primary.
Despite the data, Speaker Adams still has her reservations. “As one of many who questioned the implementation of ranked-choice voting, my belief is still that education was not appropriate to those that ranked-choice voting was meant to serve,” she said at the hearing.
Read the full article here.
