New York’s Election System Isn’t Chaotic. It’s Democracy Done Right.

Here are some recent updates from the Democratic primary for New York City mayor: Several rival candidates, for the first time in the history of the nation’s largest city, have “cross-endorsed” each other. One of them, the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, encouraged his supporters to give money to a more moderate opponent, Adrienne Adams. And people are heading to the polls early at double the rate they did last time they voted for mayor.

Some political observers see this as chaotic, problematic, and even antidemocratic. But at a time when Americans are frustrated with their democracy and the amount of money flooding elections, an alternate read is that a collection of wonky changes by New York—most prominently, ranked-choice voting—is forging a potentially exemplary new election system, one that could show the way for big blue cities afflicted with electoral apathy and cynicism. That’s no small feat for a city long plagued by election dysfunction, suffocating machine politics, and terrible turnout.

In recent years, the city has implemented early voting, greenlit even more generous public matching funds for candidates, and put stricter limits on spending and donating, but the most attention-grabbing part of the NYC model is ranked choice, which allows people to list up to five candidates in their preferred order for most local primaries. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes, then the last-place candidate is eliminated. Second-place votes for that eliminated candidate now become first-place votes, and we count again until someone gets a majority.

This means that “every individual vote has more power,” said Tim Hunter, press secretary of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, an independent city agency that aims to make elections fairer and more popular.

That’s because ranked choice, unlike a winner-takes-all system, doesn’t discourage voters from choosing their preferred candidate even if that person is polling poorly. Ranked choice also diminishes the impact of vote splitting, which is especially relevant in this year’s Democratic primary where one candidate’s name recognition and war chest—that of Andrew Cuomo, the dynastic former governor who resigned from office in 2021 after allegations of sexual harassment—far exceeds the other candidates’, most of whom are running to his left. In a typical election that featured the current field, the non-Cuomo vote would be severely diluted, with candidates squabbling until the last minute about who should drop out. 

This year’s primary gives the non-front-runners at least a potential chance. It’s the second time ranked choice is being used for an NYC mayoral campaign, following Mayor Eric Adams’s election in 2021, and there are early indications that the system brings other advantages. 

“The goal was, and it’s working, to minimize polarization and negative campaigning,” said Sal Albanese, a member of the charter review commission that placed ranked choice on the ballot in New York in 2019. “You don’t have to spend your time attacking another candidate because you want to be able to generate support from that other candidate’s supporters.” During Albanese’s second run for mayor in 2013, when it was winner-take-all, his strategy was to go after other candidates “to differentiate myself.”

This time around, there is not much negativity between the non-Cuomo opponents. But one of the more intriguing criticisms of ranked-choice voting—which is set to soon debut in Washington, D.C., and is already used in dozens of jurisdictions—portrays this as a flaw in the system. Writing in The Atlantic last week, in a piece titled “New York Is Not a Democracy,” Annie Lowrey argued that if candidates aren’t incentivized to attack each other, “that could make it harder for voters to make informed decisions.”

The New York example suggests otherwise. Rather than spending their time trying to wound their opponents, the candidates are promoting an impressively wide range of creative policies, from fast and free buses to universal after-school programs and housing on city-owned golf courses. The new system has also unleashed cross-endorsing, where two candidates tell their supporters to rank both of them. It’s something that has happened multiple times in the mayoral race, most prominently in the case of Mamdani, who has cross-endorsed both City Comptroller Brad Lander and Michael Blake, a former state assemblyman.

Moreover, contra Lowrey, this alliance did not stop Blake from virally chiding Mamdani for remarks about the phrase “globalize the intifada.” It’s far from the only example of chirping among the aligned. Candidates still politely explain why they are different—but now there’s a new way for voters to see where opponents are the same. 

“You can put a message together around it,” said Keith Powers, who chairs a City Council committee pertaining to elections and is currently running for Manhattan borough president. Two opponents, for example, can team up to highlight their advocacy for affordability and housing.

Another common criticism of ranked choice is that it’s overly burdensome. As NY1’s Errol Louis memorably put it to The New Yorker, if you had to “rank your choice of whether we have Indian, Chinese, pizza, vegan, or steakhouse. Put them in ranked order. Who’s got time for that?” Lowrey also raised the related concern about voters who don’t use the full slate: “In 2021, Black, Latino, and Asian voters were less likely than non-Latino white voters to rank a full slate of candidates, in effect curtailing their electoral power.”

But it’s New Yorkers’ right to choose as few candidates as they please. Plus, 2021 was their first experience with ranked choice, which does take some getting used to. A 2021–2022 voter analysis report from the NYCCFB suggested that more alliances and coalitions—which did indeed blossom this year—could “supply natural alternatives for [voters’] 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th choice.” More broadly, NYC voters were already embracing the system during that first year: 88.3 percent of primary voters ranked multiple candidates for at least one office.

This embrace of the slate may not be so surprising when you consider that many of the candidates have pretty similar positions on truly meaningful municipal matters like mayoral control of schools, housing policy, and even policing. Where the candidates diverge, it is often on a detailed level, such that voters might like the cut of a few jibs. When you can choose to elevate a bespoke group of preferred leaders, maybe you don’t need to make agonizing binary decisions based on the things that candidates do take uncompromising, binary stances on—especially issues that aren’t under a mayor’s control, like Israel’s war on Gaza and Iran or state-level bail reform.

Beyond ranked choice, other elements of New York’s system have had a longer time to evolve. Early voting began in NYC in 2019 after state approval. The jury is still out on whether it alone can boost NYC’s abysmal turnout, but the initiative has been popular and convenient, particularly for older and new voters.

The city’s public campaign finance program is much more established, having been approved by ballot referendum in 1988, after a series of corruption scandals. Such scandals have not exactly been wiped out (see: why Eric Adams is running as an independent and not in this year’s Democratic primary). But the public funds program, which increased to an 8-to-1 match on small-dollar donations after a 2018 charter amendment, has been credited with breeding more competition and even diversity.

The program, which includes thresholds, strict contribution limits, and lots of audits, can still make it easier for new or lesser-known candidates to compete: As of this spring, 101 candidates received public funds for this cycle’s city races, says Marina Pino, counsel at the elections and government program at the Brennan Center. Of those, 59 candidates had not received public funds in prior elections.

When $100 is nearly as good as $1,000, new candidates don’t necessarily need to spend all their time trying to get a sit-down with a big developer or Wall Street whiz. They are incentivized to raise from within their district (a requirement, to a certain level), and freed to spend more time on tasks like door knocking.

This mayoral cycle has again shown the potential of these realignments. Leading contenders Mamdani, Cuomo, and Lander have touted that they were able to stop fundraising entirely, as they’d raked in enough donations—plus public matching funds—to hit the $8 million spending cap. This is striking, particularly in Mamdani’s case given that he is a 33-year-old state legislator known by relatively few New Yorkers until this year. Impressively, the majority of his and Lander’s donations came in below $175.

This allows candidates to fund ads to get their message out and compete against opponents—in this primary’s case, one opponent—who have enormous outside support: Fix the City, the Cuomo-boosting super PAC, has raked in more than $24 million from the likes of Michael Bloomberg, DoorDash, and Alex Karp of Palantir Technologies.

That kind of cash is very difficult to combat. But the city election system has at least provided some attempts at oversight. There are strict transparency rules requiring, for example, that paid communications like mailers show a group’s top three donors. And city regulators have tried to cut down on improper coordination between outside groups and campaigns. (The Campaign Finance Board amended a rule on this subject in 2024, and months later alleged that Cuomo coordinated with a super PAC anyway. The board ended up withholding nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in public matching funds in response.) 

Even still, spending by outside groups may play the dominant role in this race, which some political observers—and candidates—see as a key area of concern. “Something’s got to be done about the super PACs,” said Albanese, the former mayoral candidate. “It’s eroding public financing.” One problem, he added, is that penalties for big-money wrongdoing get “implemented after the election.”

And as with other election issues in New York, any reforms tend to take years to happen, if at all. Which would mean another tweak to the city’s ever-evolving elections.