Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Council Member Brewer questions CFB on ranked choice voting education efforts
3:09:24
·
3 min
Council Member Gale A. Brewer engages in a Q&A session with Amanda Melillo from the NYC Campaign Finance Board about efforts to educate voters on ranked choice voting. Melillo outlines the CFB's comprehensive strategy, including targeted outreach, advertising, and community education programs. Brewer expresses concerns about the effectiveness of these efforts, particularly in reaching voters who don't use online resources.
- CFB is spending $3.2 million on ranked choice voting education
- Targeted efforts focus on areas with higher ballot rejection rates, such as the South Bronx and East New York
- Multi-pronged approach includes advertising, website tools, printed materials, and community-based education
Gale A. Brewer
3:09:24
Ranked choice voting, I understand it.
3:09:26
I don't think anybody else does.
3:09:27
It's a very complicated way of voting.
3:09:30
And so I know you're, I just want to get a little bit more understanding as to what you're trying to do to explain it to people.
3:09:36
I will be interested this year to see how many people vote just one person, etcetera.
3:09:41
It it I think we just need a little bit more creativity about, you know, from the bottom to the top blah blah blah and how that works.
3:09:48
It's it's not when I go out on the street, I'm on the street all the time, they don't know what I'm talking about.
3:12:24
It sounds good.
3:12:25
I mean, you know, lots of people don't go to the website.
3:12:27
Lots of people don't do anything online.
3:12:29
So you got all of those issues to deal with also.
3:12:32
Yes.
3:12:43
Okay.
3:12:43
I assume you're using WhatsApp and you're using some of those other opportunities also?
3:12:47
Yes.
3:12:47
Okay.
3:12:48
I mean, we'll see what happens.
3:12:50
I think you're still gonna end up with a not understanding in some of the same locations, but we'll see.
3:12:55
Despite all that work.
Amanda Melillo
3:09:54
Okay.
3:09:56
One thing I do just want to say is that we did not conduct this survey, but an outside organization did.
3:10:02
But it really tracked with what we were seeing from voters, which is that coming out of the twenty twenty one elections, which is the first time ranked choice voting was used, the majority of voters at least reported that they understood it.
3:10:16
However when we looked at the data at the back end, once the results came out we did an analysis particularly of rejected ballots, so which voters accidentally ranked more than one candidate in the same ranking.
3:10:31
And we did find that specific areas of the city had higher rejection rates.
3:10:36
Will say those generally were in the South Bronx and East New York.
3:10:40
Right.
3:10:41
So what we are doing this time, and I also should note that the council passed legislation that we worked with the council on in 2021 to codify what we should be doing for ranked choice voting and that included things like advertising, like publication of materials, like inclusion of information in the voter guides and also community education.
3:11:03
So in general this election we're spending 3,200,000.0 on ranked choice voting alone.
3:11:09
That includes an advertising campaign across the city and it is driving people to our website where we have additional tools such as tools that will help people practice ranked choice voting specifically.
3:11:23
We have explainer videos on that website.
3:11:26
We also publish and distribute to now hundreds of locations, thousands of pieces of literature that we have one pagers and palm cards explaining ranked choice voting as well.
3:11:38
We're doing an additional mailer to the geographic areas of the city I just mentioned that had a harder time with ranked choice voting when we first rolled it out.
3:11:47
So we're just injecting some additional resources into those areas to ensure that they get that education.
3:11:54
The last thing I would note, one thing that we particularly try incorporate, especially in the community based work that our partnerships and outreach team is doing, is that a lot of times language barriers further complicate ranked choice voting education.
3:12:09
And a lot of times there are some communities or some voters who just need more intensive education.
3:12:15
Like they literally need someone to walk them through a ballot and explain it.
3:12:20
So those are the sorts of things we try to incorporate into our programming as well.
3:12:24
Okay.
3:12:32
We're trying to reach voters where they are and we know that different voters have different platforms where they're getting their information.
3:12:39
And we're trying to take a multi pronged approach.