New York City’s ranked choice voting system will be critical to determining who prevails in its Democratic mayoral primary.

Voters first approved ranked-choice voting for certain city elections in 2019, but this will be only its second mayoral race to be run under the system. The winner of the Democratic primary four years ago won by about 7,000 votes, and the primary may be just as close this time.

Supporters tout the system as an alternative to the first-past-the-post system, in which the candidate who receives the most votes wins, even if it’s with less than a majority of the vote. They argue it requires a candidate to build a wider coalition and can produce winners who are more acceptable to a larger group of voters.

In New York City’s ranked-choice system, voters are allowed to rank up to five candidates in order of their preference, though they aren’t required to rank five. If one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, they are declared the winner outright.

This seems unlikely to occur........

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