NYC Votes empowers city residents through Ranked Choice Voting

In 2019, the ballot proposal for a Ranked Choice Voting system was overwhelmingly passed in New York City, with the charter amendment requiring the Campaign Finance Board to conduct an extensive voter education campaign to inform voters about RCV.

So what is a Ranked Choice voting system? NYC Votes put together an easy-to-understand video in multiple languages (see below), but the concept revolves around providing voters as much of a say as possible at the ballot box, prioritizing their candidate support from first to last, with as many choices as listed. 

Despite overwhelming support for the ballot proposal, NYC Votes knew that the effort to educate and mobilize voters would be a considerable task, requiring a multifaceted approach that not only had to take into account the vast multilingual communities of New York City, but the all-encompassing effects of a pandemic as well. Sean O’Leary is a Field Coordinator with the nonpartisan organization and has been a part of the project since day one:

“Before the pandemic, we intentionally had an on-the-ground approach to voter education, doing whatever necessary to meet people where they are,” Sean explains. “We organized civic engagement workshops, voter registration drives, door knocking across housing developments, all of which included shelters, street corners and parks, with a primary focus on youth and marginalized communities.”

As part of their commitment to using trusted messengers, NYC Votes actively recruited local volunteers to serve as conduits to crucial

Despite overwhelming support for the ballot proposal, NYC Votes knew that the effort to educate and mobilize voters would be a considerable task, requiring a multifaceted approach that not only had to take into account the vast multilingual communities of New York City, but the all-encompassing effects of a pandemic as well. Sean O’Leary is a Field Coordinator with the nonpartisan organization and has been a part of the project since day one:

“Before the pandemic, we intentionally had an on-the-ground approach to voter education, doing whatever necessary to meet people where they are,” Sean explains. “We organized civic engagement workshops, voter registration drives, door knocking across housing developments, all of which included shelters, street corners and parks, with a primary focus on youth and marginalized communities.”

As part of their commitment to using trusted messengers, NYC Votes actively recruited local volunteers to serve as conduits to crucial information regarding the Ranked-Choice model, with various events and phonebanks set up to reach their neighbors and community members. These phonebanks featured over 50 phones set up in the offices of NYC Votes, with thousands of calls going out to New Yorkers during each day of action.

Like every campaign around the country during this time, however, everything changed in light of the pandemic, and NYC Votes knew they needed to adapt in order to continue the work. Sean talks about the adjustments made in order to keep people safe while still receiving the information they needed:

“For safety and practical reasons, we first shifted to a text-based outreach system that people could do from home,” he explains. “For the 2020 general election, we sent out over 200,000 initial texts, which has since increased to nearly half a million when including the special elections and primaries.” 

To keep volunteers in touch, swap stories and maintain a sense of community during unprecedented times, they facilitated Zoom meetings and Slack channels between volunteers and staffers. They also leaned further into the use of Relational Organizing, making full use of the moment to reach out to voters who may have been unreachable even during ‘normal’ times.

NYC Votes teamed up with Organizing Empowerment in September of last year to begin their Relational Organizing pilot program through the Empower App. Starting with 8 youth ambassadors–young leaders in high school and college–they reached out to their social circles with weekly calls to action and various 1-on-1 sessions. 

While the pilot program was promising, they knew it would require expanding in order to successfully reach as many residents as possible. NYC Votes and its ambassadors began scheduling meetings with potential volunteers from all backgrounds across the city, as well as hosting community meetings to discuss best practices around Relational Organizing. These meetings were facilitated almost exclusively by local community ambassadors in order to develop trust and understanding with attendees on why this work matters.

Along with the near-half a million texts that were sent out earlier during the pandemic, the use of the Empower App enabled community ambassadors to reach their contacts who may not have been reached otherwise through traditional methods, and with a stronger likelihood of engagement due to pre-established connections. “It doesn’t serve our mission for me as a city staffer to reach out,” Sean explains, “but it pays dividends for our volunteers who are the trusted messengers. Cold calls and texts still matter, but even when door knocking, if we had the tenant president of a building for working with us, the likelihood of engagement with our neighbors was that much stronger. It’s why organizing through established connections matter.”

The numbers from Empower are clear: if campaigns and movements stick exclusively to the Voter Roll, we can be missing up to 25% of the electorate. By investing in Relational Organizing last year, NYC Votes is set to take the lessons learned from the 2020 cycle and implement them into the New York Mayoral Primary on June 22nd as well as the General Election this fall. Their goal of educating as many city residents as possible about Ranked Choice Voting might be lofty, but the progress being made is paying long term dividends of an increasingly active community of voters and organizers working together for a better future.

“One of the most rewarding parts of this work is hearing from volunteers who are excited about this,” says O’Leary, “and people thanking us for things like access to the VAR, or the NYC Ranked Choice video that we provide in multiple languages. Our contacts share it with their families and classmates, and they’re excited to be able to participate in this new voting system. The biggest thrill for us is knowing we can empower other people, and seeing that our volunteers empower both themselves and others, now and in the future.”