THREAD: here's how NYC's ranked choice voting system will work for 2021 and beyond.

A mock-up of a sample ballot per the official NYC RCV guidelines is below. Read on for more!

IBTW this thread was inspired by a convo with @aaronnarraph last week + tonight's @mvmtschool discussion with @SaulFKahn, @MsRebeccaAn, and others (don't have everyone's Twitter, sorry!)

Background: ranked choice voting (RCV) was implemented in a charter revision amendment passed in November 2019, so this thread will mainly draw from the text of the amendment. The amendment includes some minor changes to other election-related items, but we'll focus on RCV here

RCV will apply to NYC municipal races occurring on or after January 1, 2021. That includes the specials to replace @RitchieTorres (likely new U.S. Congressmember) and @DRichards13 (likely new Queens BP).

RCV applies only to NYC's municipal primaries and special elections!

RCV status of New York elections in 2021 & beyond:

Mayor
Public Advocate
Comptroller
Borough President
City Council

Party officials (State/County Cmte, DLs)
District Attorneys
NYS Senate/Assembly
Governor/LG/AG
U.S. Congress, Senate, President

Since RCV is also known as "instant-runoff voting"...there will be no runoffs in any RCV elections. Since the RCV rounds are essentially the runoffs.

On ballot design: RCV ballots will probably look something like this mockup. The official RCV instructions are included below + the Spanish/Mandarin text from this past primary.

(not shown: graphic showing how to mark the ballot)

RCV ballots will allow voters to rank 5 candidates (though they don't *have to* rank 5 candidates). The charter/amendment is actually fairly specific that the ballot will be in grid form, with candidates in the first column and squares/ovals to fill in in the next 5 columns

Since we generally use ovals for our ballots AFAIK, I don't see a reason why BOE would decide to switch to using squares instead of ovals for voters to fill in.

The ballot will provide instructions and at least a "line drawing illustration" demonstrating how to mark the ballot

When voting on machines, it seems like the ballots will prevent voters from marking more than one candidate for each ranked choice. This feature should help create more validly-marked ballots but will likely prove extremely confusing for voters/poll workers on election day

Also, if there are non-RCV elections on the same ballot, the RCV votes will be grouped and presented on a separate page (to the extend possible)

Here's a mock-up of a ballot with squares instead of ovals. I'm pretty sure it'll be the ovals, but you never know

Counting votes: the point of RCV is to take into account voters' preferences beyond their first choice.

If a candidate wins a majority of 1st-choice votes, then they win the election. That's it, no more RCV rounds, no more counting, we're done.

If no candidate wins a majority of 1st-place votes, then we proceed to the next RCV "round." In the current round of voting, the candidate with the least number of votes in the previous round is eliminated.

Voters who voted for that candidate as their top choice (or 2nd choice, etc) will then have their *next* preference counted. So if your top choice is candidate 1, and candidate 1 is knocked out, then your vote for your second choice candidate will be counted.

And these rounds just keep continuing until either:
1. There are two candidates left, and the candidate with the most votes wins, or
2. There's a tie. I'm not 100% clear on what happens here, since the Charter says "a tie...shall be resolved in accordance with election law"

If a tie occurs in a Democratic primary, I *think* County Committee then gets to choose the nominee ? (See NYS election law §6–148(3))

And here's a fun video explaining how RCV votes are actually tabulated (likely easier to understand than me trying to explain in tweets)

Communicating election results: votes will clearly have to be reported differently under RCV. After polls close on election day, it seems like the NYC BOE unofficial election results will include 1 of 2 numbers:

Results will include either:

1. A count of 1st-choice votes for each candidate, OR
2. The number of votes each candidate won per round of RCV voting

It seems like BOE has latitude to determine which stat it releases on election night

Another note: there's been some concerns about voter education, esp in BIPOC and low-income neighborhoods, around RCV. NYC CFB (NOT BOE) is responsible for educating voters on RCV.

I have substantially more confidence in CFB than BOE for this initiative, to be honest.

And, NYC BOE is supposed to already have submitted a plan for implementing RCV to the NYC Mayor and Speaker on/by June 1, 2020. Would love to get an update from either @NYCMayor or @CoreyinNYC on whether or not we're on track for successful RCV implementation in 2021!

Finally, the 2019 RCV Charter Amendment included a number of other items (changes to runoff election timing, looks like some minor changes to vote tabulation and hand-counting, etc). May or may not dig into some of those items later if I have time