The New York City mayoral primaries are on June 22 and thirteen Democrats and two Republicans will be running to lead the largest city in the United States, according to the New York City Board of Elections.
However, owing to the ranked-choice voting process winners will not be announced for at least a few weeks.
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What is the ranked-choice voting process?
In the ranked-choice voting process voters rate their top five choices in order of preference instead of picking just one.
How will the vote count work in the ranked-choice process?
If a candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes then he/she will be declared the winner. However, if none of them crosses the mark, tabulation will be conducted in rounds.
The candidate with the fewest votes after the initial count is eliminated and all ballots for that candidate will be reallocated to the next highest-ranked candidate selected. That process will continue until two candidates are left, with the winner determined by who has the most votes in that final round.
How are the results displayed?
The results of ranked-choice voting are displayed in a grid with each column representing a round of the process.
The candidates who receive the lowest number of votes will be marked in red and will therefore be eliminated.
Those votes are redistributed to whomever those voters ranked next on their ballot. That’s why the remaining candidates can gain votes each round. When there are only two candidates left, whoever has the most votes wins.
The other unique element of these results is the row at the bottom for “inactive ballots.” Those ballots, also sometimes called “exhausted” ballots, are ballots for which there are no candidates selected who remains in the running.
For example, if a voter selects only first and second choices, and those candidates are eliminated in the first two rounds, their ballot would be “inactive” and won’t be included in the rest of the process.
