NY Senate Passes Instant Runoff Voting

The NY Senate passed (S.3584-B) authorizing New York City and other localities to utilize Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) in local elections. IRV would provide opportunities for voters to express their preferences while at the same time reducing costs for elections. This measure could be of particular importance if the voters of New York City move to a nonpartisan election system, as is currently being considered by Mayor Bloomberg’s Charter Revision Commission.

Given NY's current fiscal crisis, one reason IRV can be so crucial is because it negates the need for separate primary runoffs, which are tremendously expensive. Last year, New York City spent $15 million to hold a Democratic primary runoff election for Comptroller and Public Advocate. Not only was this costly, it was also antidemocratic, since less than eight percent of eligible voters participated. There has to be a better model for running our elections.

Instant Runoff Voting would allow voters to indicate their top choices of candidates for an office by ranking them first, second, third, etc. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the first choice votes, then the candidate receiving the fewest votes is eliminated, and the second choices of those voters are counted. This process is continued until a candidate receives 50 percent of the vote. This eliminates the need for separate runoff elections while still ensuring that a marginal candidate does not win with a very small percentage of the vote in a race with many candidates.

This later factor will become particularly important if we move to nonpartisan elections. Because of the cost factor, there is no runoff system for City Council races, only citywide races. In a nonpartisan citywide election, all candidates could appear on one ballot.

This is one reason nonpartisan voting has always been controversial in New York City – it could allow a minority party’s candidate to win if the majority party’s multi-candidates split the vote too broadly. But it could also allow someone with a small but united base to defeat a slew of mainstream candidates.

The other problem with IVR voting is NY will go to optical scanners in 2010. If this change takes place there will be a major cost to reprogram the new voting system. The voters need to learn how to use the new voting system and then added another new way to vote will make the transition even more complicated.

I am supporting Non Partisan Municipal Elections with the Top-Two going on to the General Election in November. This would eliminate the need for IVR if you eliminated the 50% threshold and the Top-Two after IVR is calculated move on.

Michael H. Drucker
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