At this week's Round Table, guest podcasters Kenisha, Mateo, and Sharona spoke with Allie Swatek, Director of Policy and Research for the New York City Campaign Finance Board about the recent municipal election in New York and the advent of Ranked Choice Voting. We’ve had 110 mayors in New York. None of them have been women and only one was non-white. This year, that won’t be the case. While we don’t yet know who the mayor WILL be, it won’t be a white man. More women, and more women of color, ran for office in NYC than ever before. And more than ever seem to have won—it looks like 29 of the 51 City Council Members will be women (up from just 14 currently) and a black man is in first place for mayor with a black woman and a white woman neck and neck for second and third place as things continue to be tabulated. Multiple factors are at play--and many feel that Ranked Choice Voting played a significant role. Cities are laboratories of democracy, so how might Ranked Choice Voting impact cities more broadly now that the biggest one has left plurality voting behind, quadrupling the number of people in the U.S. who are voting through ranked choice voting? Were people prepared? We couldn’t have a better guest to help us understand the issues at play than Allie Swatek, who was part of the 2019 Charter Revision Commission that brought RCV onto the ballot and who has been working tirelessly to help citizens understand and prepare for it. Thank you for joining us!
