This year’s dismal, abysmal voter turnout has prompted a new round of facile pleas to get rid of the run-offs that have been part of our city life for 32 years. In that time, there have been a total of seven run-offs—two for mayor, two for comptroller, two for public advocate and one for City Council president, before that position was eliminated.
In other words, not really enough to be a scourge on society, or a menace to either the electoral or fiscal well-being of the city. On the contrary, this year’s pathetic showing at the polls aside, they have largely been a good thing, helping solidify New Yorkers behind the eventual leaders that have emerged from often very large and very good fields.
Instead of knocking this straw man around in the media and the halls of government, people should be focusing on dealing with the greater problem of voter engagement. Our worry should not be that run-offs are silly because too few people turned out to vote. Our worry should be that too few people turned out to vote. The primary date needs to be changed, clearly, but efforts beyond that are necessary too.
The best way to improve the integrity of the electoral system is not to eliminate run-offs, but expand them. The principle behind run-offs is to ensure that the leaders elected to make decisions are people who carry the support of a substantial percentage of the people they govern. That is important for the three citywide officials, but it is important for our borough presidents, district attorneys and City Council members as well. If we are to believe, as every man and woman who has sought these offices, or who has held them, would have us believe, that these are critically important positions, then we should treat them that way. Borough presidents should not be able to win their jobs by gaming out minor inroads in wide-candidate fields. Council members should not be able to make themselves representatives of an entire district by balkanizing the votes into tiny neighborhood appeals.
Take the 2005 Manhattan borough president race. In a nine-way race with three Council members, one former Council member, three Assembly members and two local activists, Scott Stringer picked up 23 percent of the vote in the primary. That put him well ahead of his closest opponents, but well behind what could honestly be called an overwhelming majority of support from the Democratic electorate at the end of that hard-fought race. For whatever positive or negative can be said about Stringer’s record since taking office, that 23 percent essentially guaranteed him a win in the general election, an all-butcertain win for re-election this year and a natural berth in the 2013 mayor’s race, if he wants it. In New York City politics, then, there is an eight-year job and a clear shot at Gracie Mansion without even a quarter of the vote.
The Council primaries this year show how pervasive the problem is. In Flushing, Yen Chou became the Democratic nominee with 1,825 votes, 2 percent and 150 votes ahead of the man who came in second in the six-way field. A few districts over, Karen Koslowitz picked up the nod to return to her old seat to the Council with 1,834 votes, 3 percent and about 300 votes ahead of her closest competitor. If they win the general elections in November, these women will not carry with them the resounding support of their districts as they vote on major questions of land use and the division of a $59 billion budget.
Perhaps they will, for the most part, do well, despite their lack of proven support at home, much as Stringer has. But having the power of a convincing win would in itself have given them the power to do better.
There need to be more run-offs. Every splintered primary for borough president or Council where no candidate hits 40 percent should put the top two or three vote getters into a rematch election two weeks later, just like in the races for mayor, public advocate and comptroller. To make our system better, to make democracy in New York stronger, this, and not a short-sighted, ultimately power-grabbing reaction to this year’s anomalous voter turnout, is the answer. In addition to the value they would have in themselves, more pervasive run-offs would get people in the habit of paying attention to, and voting in, the run-offs when they come, unlike this year, when just 2 percent of the city supported each winner. Taken together with sincere voter engagement and a strengthening of the campaign finance laws, this is the way to improve New York politics. (Sincere efforts to engage voters would not hurt either.) It may not be knee-jerk and easily digestible. But the right ways to really improve government rarely are.
A brave candidate for mayor, as both of the major party nominees claim to be, might raise all of these issues in the last few weeks before voters decide the direction of the next four years of this city.
The best way to improve the integrity of the electoral system is to do the opposite of what some shortsighted, reactionary advocates and officials have proposed: rather than eliminate run-offs, expand them.
