Remember the sales pitch for ranked choice voting? Sure, it’s more complicated, excludes voters, and delays results. But it’ll be worth it because ranked choice voting is supposed to help moderate, consensus candidates. So much for that.
Marxist extremist Zohran Mamdani is now the Democrat nominee for New York City mayor, with 43.5 percent of the vote. Well, sort of. Mamdani was ranked first by about 432,305 voters from among 1,026,783 who cast a ballot in the Democrat’s primary. Following ranked-choice voting retabulations, Mamdani’s share of the vote went up to 56% out of only 973,864 voters, producing the mirage of a Mamdani majority.
This is ranked choice voting’s new math. A normal election is simple addition: one vote, plus one vote, and so on until it’s done. With ranked choice voting, there are multiple rounds of addition—and subtraction.
Ranked choice voting tabulation starts by eliminating the least popular candidate, which really means eliminating the votes (first-place rankings) for that candidate. If affected voters ranked other candidates, their votes are shifted to their second-place rankings, and this repeats until a winner clinches a “majority.” But here is the kicker: along the way, if voters run out of rankings before the final round of tabulation, their ballots are eliminated from the final results. It’s as if those people never voted—all to make it appear that the winner has majority support. Their votes simply disappear from the final results.
With ranked choice voting, your right to vote does not include the right to have your vote count for an unpopular candidate. Nor does it include the right to timely and reliable election results.
It’s clear that Mamdani is going to be the Democrat’s nominee. Voters used longer, more complex ballots, and none of it matters. The initial result is almost certain to stay the same when ranked choice tabulations are completed. This was true four years ago, when Eric Adams had an even greater lead in first-place votes and, eventually, won in the ranked choice process as well.
At least when ranked choice voting is superfluous, results can be quick and decisive. If the election was closer, the multi-round tabulation could lead to weeks of uncertainty. Delays and complexity are a recipe for distrust. After Maine adopted ranked choice voting, a researcher at the MIT Election Lab found it produced “significantly lower levels of voter confidence, voter satisfaction, and ease of use.”
In Oakland, Calif., voters can be forgiven for losing confidence. Ranked choice voting there led to the wrong winner taking office. It started with a few hundred voters who didn’t rank a candidate first but did rank one second. Election officials made their own mistake, incorrectly programming their ranked choice voting tabulation software. These errors, only possible with ranked choice voting, threw off all the final counts and changed the result in one school board race.
The failure almost went undetected, because ranked choice voting tabulation happens inside the “black box” of a computer. Outside experts stumbled on it and notified the county nearly two months after the election. In all, it took four months, a voluntary resignation by the wrong winner, a court order, and dumb luck to fix this ranked choice voting mess.
New York City’s first experience with ranked choice voting flirted with a similar disaster. Before it was reversed, a tabulation glitch threatened to knock current Mayor Eric Adams out of contention. And even after the City spent $15 million to teach people how to use ranked choice voting, many simply don’t do it.
Ranked choice voting makes voting harder, affecting some citizens more than others. The data is clear: minority, low-income, and less-educated voters are more likely to have their ballots eliminated. Their voices are diluted, their influence diminished, according to another analysis. All this is supposed to be worth it because ranked choice voting will somehow produce moderate, consensus winners.
Mamdani appears to be the first choice of about 14 percent of New York City’s 3 million registered Democrats. In other words, he’s not even the consensus choice of his own party. His positions are so extreme that Gov. Kathy Hochul has thus far declined to endorse him. Mamdani wants government to run grocery stores, confiscate guns, shut down prisons, and allow prostitution. After the vicious Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, Mamdani blamed Israel’s government for “ongoing violence” in the region.
Ranked choice voting has failed New York City. It burdens voters without providing any real benefit, threatens to delay results by weeks, and increases the risk that some hidden mistake will cause a true election disaster. No wonder voters in six states refused to adopt it last year, and 17 states have banned it. Many cities have tried ranked choice voting and then repealed it. New York City should join them.
Jason Snead and Trent England are Co-Chairs of the Stop RCV Coalition.
