A ranked-choice voting bill is set to be introduced to the Albany Common Council – but it’s not quite what activists were hoping for.
Councilmember Jack Flynn's proposal would implement ranked-choice voting in primary and general elections for city-level races, like those for mayor or councilmember. Flynn said he’s open to alternate ranked-choice voting proposals but introduced the legislation to get "different perspectives” on electoral reform.
“I wanted to introduce something to get the public’s views, to get the pros, the cons, the facts, the data, what’s real, and what’s not lip service,” said Flynn, who’s hoping ranked-choice voting would improve voter turnout. “So, my intent is to get this in our committee and have the public speak and find out what we can find out for right now.”
The proposal follows months of efforts by the group Ranked Choice Voting Albany (RCV Albany), which has proposed eliminating party primaries for city races in favor of having one “single unified election” with all candidates in November. Earlier this month, RCV Albany submitted a petition with 3,200 signatures in favor of their proposal to the Albany City Clerk’s Office.
“Any kind of ranked-choice voting would be an improvement on our current voting system, but our proposal is a better model,” RCV Albany Co-Chair Dorian Solot said Monday. “It’s simpler, it’s cheaper, and it would give all voters a voice.”
Either proposal would need to be approved by voters in a referendum before being adopted.
The elimination of party primaries has faced opposition from the Democratic and Working Families parties in Albany County. They’ve argued that the proposal would disempower primary voters and confuse general election voters who would see multiple candidates with the same party affiliations. Under RCV Albany’s proposal, candidates would appear with their party registration and the names of any other political parties that agree to endorse them.
“Political parties and their members would no longer play a role in selecting the candidates that run on their party’s line, and a lot of research has shown that one of the most important ways that information gets signaled to voting members of the public about candidates is what party has nominated them,” Capital District Working Families Party Chair Andy Kaier said.
Kaier said he’d personally like to prioritize reforms to the city’s campaign finance structure, although he noted many WFP members support a simple ranked-choice voting system.
What is ranked-choice voting?
In a ranked-choice voting system, voters rank their top five candidates from most preferred to least preferred. If no candidate wins 50% of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the least first-choice votes is eliminated, and that candidate’s votes are then distributed to the candidates that voters listed as their second choices. That process repeats until a candidate wins 50% of the ballots cast.
If voters approved a version of ranked-choice voting via referendum, Albany would be the third municipality in New York state to adopt the electoral system. The town of Newburgh in Orange County adopted a version of ranked-choice voting earlier this year, and New York City has used ranked-choice voting in primaries and special elections for city positions since the 2021 cycle.
Other cities — including San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis — already use some form of ranked-choice voting.
What’s next for ranked-choice voting in Albany?
RCV Albany had hoped to put the question of ranked-choice voting to the public in a referendum this November, but that almost certainly won’t happen.
The soonest the measure could appear on the ballot would be 2027, due to an impending Aug. 3 deadline from the Board of Elections. The Common Council’s choice would be to take a more deliberative approach.
“This is something that we don’t want to rush,” Flynn said. “This is a major reform. This isn’t something that the Common Council or the public deserves to be pushed. They deserve a three-to-six-month process of public hearings and many meetings.”
Regardless of whether it has the Common Council’s blessing or not, organizers with RCV Albany say they can force their proposal onto the 2027 ballot by collecting another 1,200 signatures (or more if some of the original 3,200 signatures they submitted are deemed invalid by the City Clerk’s Office).
“We feel very confident in our ability to get those additional signatures,” Solot said. “Now that we have 3,200 signatures, an additional 1,200 is totally doable and not a big deal for us.”
