I received a post card mailer from NYC Votes concerning the June 24, 2025 New York City Primary Elections. You can see both sides of the mailer below.
NYC Votes tells you why ranked choice voting is good.
You are not watching my address. My address is watching you.
As you can see, the subject of the mailer is ranked choice voting, a novel system imposed on New York City primary elections beginning in 2021 (it is not used in New York City general elections or any statewide elections). I described New York City’s ranked choice voting scheme as “absurd” in one article about New York political comebacks (which is evergreen with respect to the 2025 New York City mayoral election (see my specious take on the 2021 resignation of Andrew Cuomo as governor)) and quipped in 2021 that “[t]he biggest benefit of being a Republican in this [mayoral] election is being able to avoid the ranked choice voting tire fire.”
My views on ranked choice voting in New York City remain unchanged, notwithstanding the pro-ranked choice voting arguments (or propaganda) on the front of the mailer. I do not dispute that ranked choice allows people to vote for multiple primary candidates and inspires candidates to engage in bizarre 16-dimensional chess schemes while funding their delusions with public matching funds, but I do not consider these things to be desirable. With all that being said, how New York City conducts primary elections is a matter of provincial concern and thus not the most exciting New Leaf Journal topic.
Instead of endeavoring to refute the purported benefits of ranked choice voting articulated on the mailer, I will tackle the issue with the first thought I had upon reading the instructions for how voters can fulfill the new one person, five votes principle. I have long understood that a good joke should be intelligible without an explanation. Or, as TV Tropes puts it for the “Don’t explain the joke” trope: “Explaining a joke just makes it not funny, except in those rare cases where the hopelessness of the attempted explanation becomes its own (unexplained) joke.” We should apply the same principle to election systems. If you feel the need to spend tax-payer money mailing a postcard to prospective voters explaining how to vote and arguing that your new voting system is good, you should probably take a step back and re-think things.
I am the Brooklyn-based administrator, editor, and main author of The New Leaf Journal and The Emu Café Social. By day I am a legal research specialist and writer. I write about my interests in my articles which include, but are in no way limited to, anime, current events, feeds and feed readers, Linux and open source, philosophy, plants, reading, video games and visual novels, and walks in Brooklyn.
The Bad Joke of NYC Ranked Choice Voting
Commentary NLJ News and NotesNicholas A. FerrellMay 30, 2025I received a post card mailer from NYC Votes concerning the June 24, 2025 New York City Primary Elections. You can see both sides of the mailer below.
As you can see, the subject of the mailer is ranked choice voting, a novel system imposed on New York City primary elections beginning in 2021 (it is not used in New York City general elections or any statewide elections). I described New York City’s ranked choice voting scheme as “absurd” in one article about New York political comebacks (which is evergreen with respect to the 2025 New York City mayoral election (see my specious take on the 2021 resignation of Andrew Cuomo as governor)) and quipped in 2021 that “[t]he biggest benefit of being a Republican in this [mayoral] election is being able to avoid the ranked choice voting tire fire.”
My views on ranked choice voting in New York City remain unchanged, notwithstanding the pro-ranked choice voting arguments (or propaganda) on the front of the mailer. I do not dispute that ranked choice allows people to vote for multiple primary candidates and inspires candidates to engage in bizarre 16-dimensional chess schemes while funding their delusions with public matching funds, but I do not consider these things to be desirable. With all that being said, how New York City conducts primary elections is a matter of provincial concern and thus not the most exciting New Leaf Journal topic.
Instead of endeavoring to refute the purported benefits of ranked choice voting articulated on the mailer, I will tackle the issue with the first thought I had upon reading the instructions for how voters can fulfill the new one person, five votes principle. I have long understood that a good joke should be intelligible without an explanation. Or, as TV Tropes puts it for the “Don’t explain the joke” trope: “Explaining a joke just makes it not funny, except in those rare cases where the hopelessness of the attempted explanation becomes its own (unexplained) joke.” We should apply the same principle to election systems. If you feel the need to spend tax-payer money mailing a postcard to prospective voters explaining how to vote and arguing that your new voting system is good, you should probably take a step back and re-think things.
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Nicholas A. Ferrell
I am the Brooklyn-based administrator, editor, and main author of The New Leaf Journal and The Emu Café Social. By day I am a legal research specialist and writer. I write about my interests in my articles which include, but are in no way limited to, anime, current events, feeds and feed readers, Linux and open source, philosophy, plants, reading, video games and visual novels, and walks in Brooklyn.