Some endorsers aren’t ranking their preferred NYC candidates. Is that too confusing for voters?

Endorsements are flying fast in these last few weeks before voters cast ballots for mayor in the Democratic primary. New Yorkers are still getting a feel for the process in the second go-around for ranked-choice voting – the system in which voters can choose up to five candidates in order of preference. Some endorsers have clearly ranked their picks. Others put out unranked slates like it's a political potluck – prompting some concern about voter confusion.

Brooklyn Rep. Nydia Velázquez led a group of six other Brooklyn Democrats who endorsed Adrienne Adams, Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani in no particular order in mid-April. They called it Brooklyn’s Dream Team. Make the Road Action made Lander their No. 1 endorsement, but also endorsed Mamdani and Adams without ranking them. The Working Families Party initially endorsed four candidates in March without ranking them – garnering some criticism. Then, at the end of May, the WFP ranked its choices and added a fifth candidate to the list. When Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas posted on X that she “proudly endorsed” four candidates for mayor this week, she included an image that said “Top rank Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani. Also rank Adrienne Adams and Zellnor Myrie.” 

It’s certainly become difficult to keep track, but could unranked endorsements actually cause more harm than good? A ballot is tossed out if a voter marks more than one candidate as a No. 1 choice. If you fill in the same candidate in all five ranked positions, only the top ranking is counted. It’s like throwing away four additional votes. City Council Member Sandy Nurse vented that, “There is no such thing as a co-number 1 rank,” on X. She urged people to educate voters, not confuse them. She declined an opportunity to elaborate further when approached for an interview. 

John Kaehny, executive director of the good government organization Reinvent Albany, said announcements of multiple endorsements were not uncommon before the introduction of ranked choice voting. “Complaints about confusion - we just have not seen it,” Kaehny said. “ I think that it doesn't matter very much, the endorsements. Even in regular primary elections without ranked choice, you've had organizations for years and years endorsing multiple candidates and it doesn't seem to really confuse voters a whole lot.”

It can be helpful if endorsements come with preferences, according to Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, which advocates to strengthen the democratic process. “Ideally, the endorsements have an internal ranking: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. But that's not essential,” she said. “It's perfectly possible to do a ranked-choice voting endorsement that is: Here are our top candidates, and then you leave it up to the voter to decide which is one, which is two, which is three,” Lerner said.

It may take more time to decide in what order you prefer five candidates, but Lerner argues it’s human nature to see things in a designated order. “ I keep saying over and over again, we intuitively rank,” she said. “There's a reason why you have all of these clickbait things about Top 10 beach vacations.”

While co-endorsers seem to have the best intentions, there have also been allegations of misinformation on ranked-choice voting this cycle. Scott Stringer’s campaign came under fire when Chief of Staff Elaine Fan sent out a misleading message in simplified Chinese on WeChat saying it’s “prohibited” to put “multiple selections” on their Democratic mayoral primary ballots, the Daily News reported. The messages said people should “vote only for Scott Stringer.” Fan said there were different interpretations of what she wrote in the forums popular with Chinese New Yorkers. Campaign spokesperson Sam Raskin told the Daily News Stringer “wasn’t aware of the creation or distribution of this graphic,” that he has always supported ranked-choice voting and he encourages New Yorkers to use it.

In general, ranked choice voting has been shown to result in an increase in voter turnout. When it was first introduced in New York’s mayoral primary in 2021, turnout was over 26%. Yes, that’s low, but it was the highest voter turnout rate of any mayoral primary in the last few decades. While close to 90% of those voters ranked more than one candidate, only 46% of Democrats utilized all five of their ranking options. 

There’s another aspect of ranked-choice voting that hasn’t fully played out yet in New York. “ Ranked choice voting is designed to encourage what you would think of as alliances or co-endorsements - an I endorse you, you endorse me, type thing,” Kaehny said. “ We're not really seeing that, yet. Maybe that'll happen in the next week or so.”