ITHACA, N.Y. — A petition to bring ranked-choice voting and open primaries to a referendum in the City of Ithaca was denied by the Ithaca City Clerk, but the effort has spurred the Common Council to explore the election reforms in a working group.
The two election reforms could have appeared on the November ballot, but Ithaca City Clerk Alan Karasin told Common Council on Wednesday he was unable to certify the petition “from a strictly legal standpoint.” The petition did not meet one key requirement: petitioners failed to include a plan to pay for the costs associated with switching local elections voter to ranked-choice voting and open primaries.
Tompkins County Board of Elections Democratic Commissioner Stephen DeWitt and Republican Commissioner Alanna Congdon told The Ithaca Voice in a July 18 interview they weren’t sure how expensive adopting the election reforms could be, but they gave a rough guess that it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to pay for training, as well as voting machine changes, like new software.
While the petition was not certified, Mayor Robert Cantelmo said on Wednesday he would appoint a working group at the September meeting of Common Council to explore ranked-choice voting. There appears to be broad support among the city’s elected officials to implement some version of ranked-choice voting.
But support for open primaries remains weaker. Cantelmo has said he supports ranked choice voting, but is more apprehensive about open primaries.
Tom Clavel, who helped lead the group that submitted the petition to bring the election reforms to a referendum, said he thought the petition’s rejection was fair. However, he said he was not disappointed by the development. He said he thought the working group Cantelmo will appoint is a mark of his group’s success.
“What actually needed to happen happened without a referendum. What actually needed to happen was council needed to pick this up and start running with it,” Clavel said.
Ranked-choice voting would allow voters to choose multiple candidates at the ballot box in Ithaca’s mayoral, Common Council, and city judge races.
Voters would rank candidates from their first to last choice. If a voter’s first-choice candidate receives the least amount of votes, and is thus knocked out of the race, then a voter’s second-choice candidate receives their vote.
The process of eliminating candidates repeats until a single candidate receives a majority of votes.
Proponents of the reform argue that they increase competition in elections, and lead to a more democratic outcome.
Major U.S. cities and even some states, like Alaska, have adopted a version of ranked-choice voting. City Attorney Victor Kessler cited New York City’s adoption of ranked-choice voting as a sign that adopting the election reform was “very doable” for Ithaca. But open primaries might be another matter.
Kessler said that reform poses a “bigger research question” and it’s unclear if there is a legal path forward for it.
Open primaries, as defined by the rejected petition Clavel helped to submit, would remove the requirement that voters need to be a member of a specific party in order to vote in a primary election. Candidates running for an office would compete in a single race open to all voters. At least two, or up to five, of the candidates would advance to the general election from the primaries.
It’s a reform that Alderperson Ducson Nguyen said on Wednesday was better defined as an all-candidate primary, rather than an open primary.
The petition submitted would have put the reforms to a vote in November. Now it would take at least a year for the reforms to be decided on via referendum. Cantelmo said he thought changes to elections should be done slowly, and welcomed the opportunity for public discussion on the topics.
“Changing the structural elements of how we choose our elected officials, we want to be very process oriented,” Cantelmo said. “And we want to have plenty of time for public engagement and, most importantly, public education about whatever changes we would have.”
He added that he would want to avoid making city residents feel “confused or disenfranchised” with whatever election changes officials might pursue.
Cantelmo said he would announce appointments for the working group on election reforms in September.
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