Beware of Ranked-Choice Voting
Progressives will hail it as a must-have savior of democracy if their candidate wins NYC’s Democratic mayoral primary
PROGRESSIVES KNOW THAT most Americans do not support their radical agenda. This much has been demonstrated by moderate Democrats being dragged down by their Defund the Police colleagues during an election that saw their candidate claim the presidency.
American’s distaste for progressive orthodoxy continues to be displayed by citizens rising up to reject having the Critical Race Theory false premise that America’s founding was based on slavery taught in schools.
But that is not the end of the list when it comes to groups being outraged by woke politics. No single population group has been affected by the negativity of progressive governance more than those who live in America’s major cities. New Yorkers, who had the opportunity to watch their city get embarrassed on a national stage while businesses were burned in riots, and the country’s largest police force was all but neutered by a progressive mayor, had the opportunity to make their voices heard last week in response to this.
The Democratic primary contest saw a swath of contestants — both familiar and not — compete at the chance to beat their Republican challenger and take the office of mayor. Contestants included former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and a pro-school choice candidate, that used to work in the city’s sanitation department, Kathryn Garcia.
The most prominent candidates, though, were the ones campaigning from opposite poles: Eric Adams, a tough-on-crime former police captain, and Maya Wiley, a defund the police candidate knighted by progressive Queen Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
If New York City operated its elections like any other sane locale, Eric Adams would have gotten the nod last week after polls closed and began the hard work of fighting the city’s massive crime surge. Unfortunately, for city residents, this election is being decided by the farcical process known as ranked-choice voting.
As strange as it may sound, the candidate with the most votes doesn’t necessarily win in this process. Instead, voters rank their top five candidates; they pick their first choice (in normal elections, this is the end of the game) and rate their honorable mentions from second place on down.
If no candidate receives 50% of the vote initial vote — a feat in a crowded primary field such as New York’s — lower polling candidates get eliminated. Their votes then get added to whichever candidate voters rated next in line.
New York Cities Democratic Primary is projected to go through nine rounds of eliminations before a winner is decided. The currently-leading Mr. Adams has promised a referendum on ranked-choice should he win. New Yorkers should hope he does.
But why on Earth would anyone want this system, you ask? The answer: It is just another way for progressives to game the system to make their candidate the only choice for Democratic voters in the general election— whether the majority of voters want them or not.
A similar gaming system is playing out in New Jersey, though it is not as bad ranked-choice voting. But one can expect that if Maya Wiley ends up claiming the primary win in New York, Progressive groups across the county will cry that the democratic sky will fall unless their state, city, or county institutes this boondoggle of a system.
It should come as no surprise that ranked-choice voting is popular in such progressive enclaves as Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco, Calif, and Minneapolis. New York City voted for this mess in 2019, but they still deserve better. And Mr. Adams has correctly stated that this system silences minority voters and those with moderate views.
As the Election Day ballots and early-voting absentee voting indicated, Mr. Adams handily defeated Wiley and his other competitors in every borough except one: Manhattan. If that isn’t representative of minority voices getting crowded out by white, kale-eating progressives, then nothing is.
Crime disproportionality affects communities of color — which is why Adams leads in them with his calls to bring law and order back to the city. White Manhattanites are free to vote to defund the police because they are isolated by their high-rise apartments and are wealthy enough to flee the cities when things get bad — which they have.
Nevertheless, even with Adams losing Manhattan, with the votes as they stood, Wiley was due to be eliminated in the eighth round, and Adams was projected to beat out Garcia for the win in the ninth, according to The New York Times.
However, there is still more bad news for New Yorkers: The ballots are still rolling in.
Due to more progressive absurdity, votes could arrive by mail and be counted until June 29, meaning the city’s Board of Elections now has an additional 125,000 votes to add to the mix.
America can now enjoy the show as an election changes well after its completion — a promise that Congressional Democrats hope to force onto the entire country with H.R. 1.
New Yorkers will not know who their mayor is until the middle of July, the city’s election board says.
It would be extremely fortunate if Mr. Adams wins and bails the city’s residents out of the crime wave and ineffectual voting system that they have brought onto themselves. But if Wiley wins, the rest of the country should take these horrible examples of progressive governance and do all they can to prevent them from coming to their town.
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