Signs promoting Zohran Mamdani, state assemblyman and winner of the Democratic New York City mayoral primary, are passed out to union members ahead of an event on July 15, 2025, in New York City.

New York City recently conducted its second Democratic mayoral primary election using the ranked-choice method of voting. The idea behind ranked-choice is to give voters more power by allowing them to list candidates in order of preference, so that even if their first-choice candidate is not victorious, they can weigh in on the merits of the other candidates, too.

Ideally, under this system, the most-preferred candidate emerges victorious, and the results truly represent the sentiments of the electorate. But that’s not what happened in New York City — and it’s a warning sign for efforts to expand ranked-choice voting to other parts of the state.

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In New York City, voters were able to list five choices on their ballot in the........

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