More Choices, More Problems? Ranked Choice Voting Errors in New York City

• Published date: 01 May 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X231220640
• Author: Lindsey Cormack
• Date: 01 May 2024

Article

American Politics Research

2024, Vol. 52(3) 306–319

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X231220640

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More Choices, More Problems? Ranked

Choice Voting Errors in New York City

Lindsey Cormack

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Abstract

Examining the impacts of ranked choice voting (RCV) on voter eff‌icacy is important as more areas consider adoption. The

greater number of choices provided by longer RCV ballots may introduce opportunities for voters to mi sunderstand the ballot,

make errant marks, or accidentally mark two or more candidates for one ranking, resulting in voidable ballots due to

“overvoting.”Using ballot data from the 2013 general election, the 2017, and 2021 New York City democratic mayoral

primaries, this paper asks whether voidable overvote ballots are more concentrated in constituencies with lower levels of

educational attainment, average household incomes, and differing racial make-ups, and if this relationship is more pronounced

under RCV than traditional elections. In the f‌irst RCV election in 2021, voters in locations with lower levels of educational

attainment and median household incomes had higher shares of overvote voidable ballots than those in locations withhigher

educational attainment and incomes.

Keywords

ranked choice voting, electoral systems, voter eff‌icacy

Introduction

Most elections in the US operate under one-time, single-winner

plurality rules. This means that the candidate who receives the

highest number of votes wins the seat, without requiring the

winner to earn a majority (Santucci, 2018). However, Ranked

Choice Voting (RCV) is an increasingly adopted electoral re-

form in US cities and states. In 2021, New York City - home to

the the largest municipal government of the United States -

agreed to hold municipal partisan primaries using RCV (Fortin,

2020).

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Like traditional elections RCV elections in the US are

also generally single-winner contests

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that do not require a

majority threshold to select a winner. RCV elections have

multiple tabulation stages, where ranked votes transfer from the

least selected candidates to others until the f‌inal top two can-

didates emerge, and the winner is determined as the highest vote

getter. In this paper I assess one of the unintended consequences

of implementing RCV for voters, the possibility that their ballots

are voided due to marking errors.

In recent years, scholars have shown a greater interest in

assessing the potential promises and pitfalls of the RCV

system. More outlets are dedicating issues to theoretical,

experimental, and empirical analyses of how RCV works in

the US context (Tolbert and Kuznetsova, 2021) as well as the

potential for RCV to inf‌luence voters’attitudes towards

democracy in general (Guti´

errez et al., 2022). As more states

and municipalities consider implementing RCV, it is

important to assess how the system performs empirically

across a range of questions. In this paper, I explore the

possibility that the additional choices allowed in RCV may

unintentionally present downsides for voters. Specif‌ically, I

f‌ind that for certain voters, this change may lead to reduced

electoral eff‌icacy due to errors that result in voided ballots.

Voters and Voting Decisions

Voters’levels of political knowledge and interest are often

related to demographic characteristics and overall voting

performance (Carpini & Keeter, 1996;Brady et al., 1995;

Brehm and Rahn, 1997). Generally, better educated and

wealthier voters tend to be more informed about political

matters and elections on average (Lind and Rohner, 2017).

When it comes to making ballot errors, even on non-RCV

ballots, less educated individuals tend to make more errors

compared to those who are more educated (Herrnson et al.,

2012). These differences in knowledge and education may

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Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Lindsey Cormack, College of Arts and Letters, Stevens Institute of

Technology, 1 Castle Point on Hudson, Morton 318, Hoboken, NJ 07030,

USA.

Email: lindsey.cormack@gmail.com