Response of RCV Albany to the June 18 Memo of local Party Officials Concerning the RCV Unified Election Ballot Proposal
Dear Albany Common Council members,
On Saturday, Councilmember Anane shared a memo with a Ranked Choice Voting Albany steering committee member that had been addressed to the Council by Jacob Crawford, Chair of the Albany County Democratic Party, and Andy Kaier, Secretary of the Capital District Chapter of the NY Working Families Party. Today it was sent to the private emails (not public, concerningly) of all Common Council members. In it, these party leaders expressed their firm opposition to RCV Albany's proposal that city voters be allowed to decide whether to change their local election system to a single November election with ranked choice voting.
Our goals with this proposal are to increase participation, simplify the voting process, and create systems of fair representation. The memo claims the exact same goals, word for word, so we are confused why they attack our proposal so vehemently.
What we propose and why
Ranked choice voting, which notably does not come under fire in the memo, has long been shown to boost election outcomes for women, candidates of color, and other underrepresented groups, while also preventing vote splitting and giving voters more choice on the ballot. When voters use it, they like it. To explain why our proposal also includes a Single Unified Election (check out our full webpage on the subject), here is some context:
RCV Albany was formed in summer 2025, when a group of local voters interested in election reform met to figure out how to renovate Albany democracy. Ranked choice voting, recently used to great effect in NYC primary elections, could help significantly, but there were two problems it couldn't solve alone:
In Albany, the June primary election determines the final election outcome, and the November election is redundant.
The 1/4 of Albany registered voters who aren't Democrats or Republicans are disenfranchised, unable to vote in the only election that matters. These unaffiliated voters, while overall having similar political leanings as the rest of the city, are more likely to be young, veterans, and/or not fit neatly into two political categories.
In presenting to community groups and neighborhood associations, a clear favored solution emerged: simply eliminate the June primaries and have a single, unified November election with ranked choice voting where all candidates and voters can participate. As bonuses, this simpler system would save the City of Albany hundreds of thousands of dollars in election administration, and candidates wouldn't need to collect signatures in the frigid early months of the year. Giving all working people the opportunity to fully express their vote seems obviously pro-labor and pro-democracy.
This model is by far the most common model of RCV in cities around the U.S., so is well-established and offers plentiful data on its effectiveness. While the memo draws analogies to statewide billionaire-funded campaigns, far better analogies for Albany are the local home-grown campaigns that saw the introduction of RCV in a single unified election in Minneapolis, San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Fe, and many others. These campaigns eliminated the need for costly local runoff elections and have led to far more representative and responsive government. We would be more than happy to set up a conversation between Albany Councilmembers and community leaders from other cities that have changed to using RCV in a single election.
Our petition, a local effort circulated by local volunteers, has at this point collected over 3,100 signatures from registered voters across Albany, more than any local candidate campaign has ever gathered, as far as we are aware. There has been no attempt to deceive: the petition says clearly across the top: "PETITION FOR SINGLE UNIFIED ELECTION AND RANKED CHOICE VOTING IN THE CITY OF ALBANY." The model of RCV using a single unified election has also been part of every one of our 40+ presentations, in our literature, on our social media, in our Times-Union op-ed, etc. It has also been endorsed by many neighborhood associations and community groups. This is truly "the power of organized people" the memo praises and defends!
Where the memo falls short
Although the memo uses the scare tactic of mentioning "jungle primaries" such as California's, the proposed model for Albany does not contain the pitfalls of California's model. In fact, many astute commentators have recommended RCV as a solution for California's election challenges. To the extent that there is the similarity of all voters voting on the same ballot like in CA and WA, it is instructive to look at how representation of women and racial minorities in New York State compares to these states: in short, the lack of a more inclusive election system may be the reason it took so long for Albany to get its first Latina Assemblywoman and Black woman mayor.
The memo raises concerns about the ability of parties and organized groups to exert influence and disavow candidates under the new election system. In reality, it doesn't affect very much in this regard: currently, what determines whether a candidate will appear on the city ballot as a Democrat is not party approval, but collecting the requisite number of signatures from registered Democratic voters; the same is true for Working Families Party candidates. There is currently no mechanism to prevent a candidate from appearing under a party label, which has caused repeated problems for the WFP in the past. The change we propose is that a candidate, after collecting signatures without skipping doors on the basis of party registration, would appear on the ballot with their registered party affiliation *as well as* any affiliations based on mutual agreement between party and candidate.
The memo is correct that this is a switch from "disaggregated" to "aggregated" fusion voting, which is the recommended way to enable use of ranked choice voting in a fusion general election. Under this system, minor parties could choose to build power by appearing on the ballot alongside a major party, and/or by seizing the new opportunity provided by RCV in a general election: running a candidate of their own without "spoiling" the election.
As far as endorsements: parties, unions, and community groups already have robust mechanisms for endorsing and promoting their favored candidates in primary elections, which they could continue to use for the single unified election. With the addition of ranked choice voting, they would even be able to express endorsements with more nuance: in cities that already use the 'RCV with single unified election' model, parties often endorse a specific ranked list, encouraging members to rank Candidate A first, Candidate B second, etc.
With regard to legality, the final sentence of Election Law § 1-102 grants cities broad authority to override state election laws in structuring local elections unless explicitly forbidden. Note that when the memo talks about last year's proposal to eliminate party primaries in NYC, the fight discussed was not legal but political and ideological in nature. The RCV Albany proposal would indeed need to go to the Attorney General for pre-approval under the historic John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York; we expect it would pass with flying colors, since earlier this year ranked choice voting was used in Newburgh as a court-imposed remedy for racial disenfranchisement.
Conclusion
Although the leaders of the Albany County Democratic Party and Capital District Working Families Party claim to be concerned with "fair representation" and "diluting the power of communities," their position would continue to suppress the voices of the 14,000 unaffiliated and minor party voters in the City of Albany. Since there are higher percentages of these voters in Albany's minority wards than in its predominantly white wards, their position is to continue the exclusion of a significant portion of Black and Brown communities from the ballot box. We are concerned that these party leaders appear to fear ranked choice voting in a single unified election not because it is anti-democratic in nature, but because it might interfere with their political projects that rely on excluding a large portion of Albany residents.
Thank you to all the Common Council people who already understand and support this proposal, as well as those who have pledged their yes vote as a way to step aside and allow the voters to decide. A yes vote on this proposal will merely allow it to go before the voters in November. When it comes before you soon in the Common Council, with the weight of 3,100 Albany registered voters behind it, we hope that you will vote YES to give Albany's voters the freedom to choose their own election system.
Thanks for your hard work in service of democracy and the people of Albany,
Dorian Solot and Charlotte Collett
Co-Chairs of RCV Albany