Hi friends,
The Board of Elections is expected to certify the results of the primaries today and it will be possible to analyze the success or failure of ranked choice voting. Turnout for the primary was 29 percent higher than in 2013, the last time there was a Democratic mayoral primary, so that’s a good indication that the new system did not suppress the vote.
Exit polls, commissioned by Common Cause and Rank the Vote NYC and released in late June, showed 78% of the nearly 1,700 Democratic voters surveyed said they understood ranked choice voting “extremely or very well.”
Most voters surveyed indicated they ranked at least three candidates in the mayoral primary, and 95% of voters surveyed found the ballot simple to complete — findings that held true across ethnic groups.
My take is that there are people who are wary of change — including the Democratic nominee for mayor — who are questioning the introduction of a new system. A fair question is to ask how older voters fared, and to examine and redouble outreach efforts to educate voters.
To be sure, the Board of Elections has room for improvement.
Call on your state representative to consider A05691, a bill to reform the BOE. Here’s a ready-made message!
Before being deposed about the allegations against him of sexual harassment, the governor signed into law six election reform bills, including one that makes it easier to obtain an absentee ballot. Another requires that absentee ballot requests be postmarked 15 days before Election Day. Most of these laws will be in effect immediately and should improve the administration of NYS elections, beginning in November.
As the results of the June primaries are finalized, there are some impressive wins we should celebrate:
Kristin Richardson Jordan, a queer Black poet, teacher, and democratic socialist, appears to have defeated incumbent Bill Perkins by campaigning on a progressive platform — including prison abolition — in Harlem’s District 9.
Christopher Marte, an activist and son of the Lower East Side, defeated Jenny Low by building a coalition of Asian American, white, and Latinx voters to claim the council seat in District 1 vacated by Margaret Chin. Marte took positions against some unpopular real estate developments and “won almost every precinct in the district.”
In Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, Chi Ossé, 23, won on a progressive platform. Ossé, a Black Lives Matter activist and a queer Haitian American, will represent District 36, formerly represented by Robert Cornegy.
Crystal Hudson, in neighboring District 35, ran as an “unapologetically pro-Black, pro-queer, pro-justice” candidate to represent “the historically Black neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.”
Donovan Richards has held on to the Queens Borough Presidency, fending off Elizabeth Crowley’s determined campaign against defunding the police.
Newark, NJ is leading the way on reducing lead levels in drinking water.
Since early 2019, residents of Newark have watched workers dig up and swap out thousands of lead lines that long linked their homes with the city’s water main. By this spring, local officials had removed more than 20,000 lead service lines. It’s an impressive feat, especially considering that recently updated federal regulations allow cities 33 years to accomplish the same task.
A recent audit by the Comptroller’s office found that
more than 5,700 water fixtures had lead levels that violated environmental regulations in 2018 and 2019. Of those, only 537—less than 10%—were fixed and ready for follow-up testing within a month of being flagged.
Once they were fixed, close to 30% of the water sources didn’t receive an additional test until after the two-week deadline laid out by the Department of Education (DOE), according to the report.
There were serious delays in some schools:
A pair of Brooklyn schools contained approximately two dozen water sources, apiece, with high lead levels that went unfixed for more than three years.
Contact Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter and to let her know that every school must provide a free alternative source of safe drinking water while remediation is taking place. Here’s a ready-made action.
The president recently signed a new anti-trust executive order targeting agriculture, finance, health care, transportation, and tech industries. One of the things I appreciate about Biden is his little guy sensibility; he understands that if corporations are fixing the price of hearing aids or broadband (or anything), we are screwed. The premise of anti-trust efforts is still capitalist competition, but as long as we have to live with capitalism, I am going to cheer on the New Dealer in the White House who says:
“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.”
Bad ideas will continue to abound. The question is how we cope while we’re working to make change.
Anastasia Higginbotham’s new book, Not My Idea, is a new book aimed at children to let them know that they don’t have to defend racism just because they were born white. Higginbotham is a brilliant voice in the children’s book world and brings intelligence and empathy to difficult topics like death, divorce, sexuality, identity, and racism.
Buy Not My Idea for a child you love.
Gifted and Talented programs are drawing pre-school children from more neighborhoods. This is an important way to work against school segregation and for more equitable access to educational resources. The Biden Administration is striving to invest in pre-K for three and four year-olds and to make tuition-free community college available to every adult. For at least ten years, progressive voices have been calling for publicly funded education from “cradle-to-career.”
“There was a degree of reckoning with the George Floyd murder that made it harder to defend sacred cows that were discriminatory,” [one organizer] said. “That doesn’t mean every institution changed, or every policy. But there was more pressure to deal with things.”
In 2019, voters elected a City Council that was, for the first time, dominated by women and people of color.
Perhaps we can follow Boston’s example here in NY, now that we’ve elected a more diverse and progressive council. It will take political will to change the state law that binds admission to the big three specialized high schools to the SHSAT (admissions test). I think our moment is arriving.
Have a great day!
with love,
L