This article by Barbara Rodriguez published in The 19th features RepresentWomen's Cynthia Richie Terrell and the 2020 Ranked Choice Voting Report when talking about how RCV impacted New York City's elections.

Read an excerpt below.

In New York City, primary voters were able to pick up to five candidates for mayor, a race that received considerable national attention. Eric Adams, the Democratic primary winner for mayor, will become only the city’s second Black mayor if he is elected in November. He won his historic campaign after a close race with Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner, following eight rounds of elimination in a crowded primary. Garcia’s candidacy and the candidacy of Maya Wiley, a former city adviser who came in third, shows how ranked-choice voting raised the profiles of multiple women and people of color (Garcia is White; Wiley is Black).

Cynthia Richie Terrell, founder and director of RepresentWomen, said there is still incoming data on the complete breakdown of ranked-choice voting in New York City. But she said it’s clear there were overlapping votes between Garcia and Wiley. She said that has significance for women and people of color  who seek future bids for mayor and other offices.

“It gets away from that idea that somehow there’s ‘a woman’s lane’ or ‘the Black candidate’s lane,’ but that, ‘Wow, multiple women can run and that’s fine, and they don’t split the vote,'” she said.

Several cities and jurisdictions have enacted ranked-choice voting, and many more are expected to incorporate it into their elections. But the New York City mayoral race in some ways put it on a bigger national stage. Organizers hope that headlines about botched results — the New York City Board of Elections erroneously at one point released incorrect preliminary results — will not be seen as a reflection of a system that has worked in other places.

Read the complete story on The 19th.