This Election, You’ll Rank Your Choices

This article is about candidates in Brooklyn and across NYC who will be running on ranked-choice ballots for the first time, citing RepresentWomen's 2020 RCV report. Read an excerpt below:

Another argument for ranked-choice voting is that it hopes to engender greater equity among candidates. The old plurality system often had the effect of discouraging women and people of color from running in certain races, with party leaders warning potential candidates that they might split the vote against another woman or person of color who already had their backing. The way this argument goes, ranked-choice voting could empower more candidates to think they have a shot, not just the party insiders.

A study conducted by advocacy group Represent Women found that, between 2010 and 2019, 34% of local candidates in ranked-choice elections across the U.S. were women. Other big cities that currently practice ranked-choice voting include San Francisco and Minneapolis. Of those in the study, 35% won their races. Women of color made up 38% of these winners. And 48% of all seats up for election during this time period were won by women.

“People who would normally be told to wait their turn, to sit out a race, that they may split the vote — that’s no longer a concern,” Sean Dugar, a director at Rank the Vote NYC, told Bushwick Daily. “And the sad reality is that for people of color, for women, for younger candidates, that they tend to be able to raise less dollars. There are less donors willing to step forward. Their networks may have a lower wealth median than some other folks. So not having to raise the funds to run in a runoff, being able to put everything on the line in a single election, makes a great impact as well.”

Read the full article here.

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