Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public policy matters. Any expressions of opinion are those of the author. We welcome responses to the views presented here. To join the debate, please email us at [email protected].

Later this month, New York City Democrats will vote in their party’s primary for mayor. For the second time, this primary for mayor of America’s largest city will be conducted through a ranked-choice voting (RCV) process. Supporters and skeptics alike will be watching closely to see whether this reform lives up to its promises or invites new calls for rollback.

New York City voters approved RCV for municipal elections in a referendum held at the 2019 general election. The amendment to establish RCV was placed on the 2019 ballot by a city charter revision commission. It applied to primary elections for all New York City municipal offices as well as special elections to fill vacancies in municipal offices. New York City voters approved the RCV amendment by an overwhelming margin, and it was first used in a 2021 special election for city council.

The Big Apple isn’t the only state or local government to embrace RCV in recent years. Both Maine and Alaska use a form of RCV in statewide elections, and dozens of cities—including San Francisco and Minneapolis—use RCV as well.

Under New York City’s system of RCV, if any candidate receives a majority of the vote on the first ballot, he or she is elected; if no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the process continues. After each round of voting, the last-place candidate is dropped, and that candidate’s votes are reallocated to the remaining candidates based on voters’ preferences indicated by their ballot. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of the vote.

Four years ago, RCV was used for the first time in a primary election for Mayor of New York City. It did not go smoothly. An error by the New York City Board of Elections (NYCBOE) caused over 135,000 test ballots to be included in the count of actual primary ballots. The mishap was a major embarrassment for the NYCBOE. After eight rounds of voting and dropping all but two candidates, the Brooklyn Borough President, Eric Adams, squeaked out a narrow win and emerged as the Democratic primary winner. Adams went on to win the general election and is running for reelection this year as an independent.

The NYCBOE’s blunder no doubt caused many New Yorkers to question whether RCV was right for the Big Apple. But four years later, New York City continues to use RCV for primary and special elections, and there have been no significant efforts to scrap RCV in the years since the 2021 primary election.

If RCV faces challenges in the future, the challenges are likely to be political, not legal or administrative. This year’s two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York, former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, come from very different ideological wings of the party. Since resigning as Governor, Cuomo has become a leading critic of the progressive base of the Democratic Party. Mamdani, on the other hand, is a self-described democratic socialist who has received strong backing from the Democratic Socialists of America.

The outcome of this primary will likely have a major impact on RCV’s future in the Big Apple and beyond. While progressives have generally been the strongest proponents of RCV, will that continue if the winner of the primary is Andrew Cuomo, a proud centrist Democrat and strong critic of his party’s left wing? Should Cuomo prevail, it will be the second time in a row RCV has delivered a win for the leading centrist in a Democratic primary for New York City Mayor.

Conversely, should RCV produce a win for Assemblyman Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist, will leading national Democrats come to see RCV as an obstacle to making their party more acceptable to middle-of-the-road voters? More importantly, will moderate Democrats actively work to stop the adoption of RCV by more states and municipalities? And might they even attempt to scrap RCV in the places that have already implemented it?

Ranked choice voting has become one of the most discussed electoral innovations in the country. The result of New York’s upcoming mayoral primary may influence how long that momentum lasts.