Listeners today on this national politics podcast, we're going to talk about a local election that has

national implications. It's the New York City mayoral primary, and we're including it here

because this election will be the biggest test so far of a new way of conducting elections.

It's called rank choice voting. Some other places around the country do already have it, but if it makes it in New York, it might make it anywhere as the song goes.

So as the nation grapples with the dueling issues of actual voter suppression and trumped-up calls for election security,

taking a short look at some alternatives to how we hold elections is pretty

interesting right now, so here's that conversation.

I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, June 22nd.

With me for a few minutes now is Susan Lerner, Executive Director of the Good Government

Group, Common Cause, New York. She's been out in Brooklyn this morning and is a big proponent

of ranked choice voting. Hey, Susan, thanks for a few election day minutes.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Always happy to speak with you, Brian.

And your group has been a proponent of ranked choice voting. Do you think it's affecting

this election for the better from what you can tell so far?

Well, we've been out and about, and voters are telling us that ranked choice voting

is simple and easy to use, and some voters have told us that they've been more engaged

because they have researched the candidates in order to rank them. To play devil's advocate,

under the old system, what we might see tonight is, let's say

Eric Adams first and Catherine Garcia second, for example, if it follows the recent polls,

and neither of them gets more than 40% of the vote, so the top two finishers have a runoff

election one-on-one over the next few weeks.

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