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The system has been tested in Minneapolis and San Francisco, as well as other countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. "We're still not sure as to why all these cities have beat us to it," said Nascimento. Added Susan Lerner, of Common Cause New York, "This one has been road-tested," compared to other new ways of voting. Under the ranking system, candidates who collect a majority of the vote would win.

“All too often frequently what we find is that the winner in these crowded fields is chosen with much less than a 50 percent majority,” said Susan Lerner, head of Common Cause New York and the leader of the campaign to pass ranked choice voting. “That’s not as healthy for our democracy as it needs to be.”

“It empowers voters,” said Susan Lerner, head of the good government group Common Cause. “We want more voter choice.” Common Cause has found that among city primary races with three or more candidates, two thirds are decided without a majority vote. “You don’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils. You don’t have to be concerned about splitting the vote,” Lerner said. If the system is implemented, the city will no longer hold physical runoff elections, which often cost millions and have low turnout. Other cities, including San Francisco and Minneapolis, already use ranked choice voting. Where it’s been tried, it’s been shown to reduce negative campaigning because candidates don’t want to alienate their rivals’ voters, Lerner said. “It discourages negativity,” she said. “The system rewards candidates who make it their business to talk to the most voters. That is not the system now. The system now rewards the candidates who dive deepest and mobilize their own base.”

“So then the question is how to handle it. Is it appropriate to give an additional vacation or personal comp time day in order to balance that out,” said Susan co, executive director of the government watchdog Common Cause New York, in an interview. “That’s a collective bargaining question, which so far it is my understanding the city has not taken up with the unions,” she added.

And de Blasio narrowly avoided indictment in an influence-peddling scandal in 2017 that was tied to his fundraising for a nonprofit controlled by his allies, the Campaign for One New York. “He keeps taking the wrong lessons from these reprimands — that he can get away with things, rather than stop doing them,” Susan Lerner, the longtime head of the New York chapter of the left-leaning good government group Common Cause, told The Post in August as the news of the HTC hotel permit shift broke. “It’s deeply upsetting and completely objectionable.”

Shockingly few candidates for city office won more than 50% of the vote in the last three election cycles, according to research cited by Common Cause/NY. “A mere 36% of multi-candidate primaries were won with more than 50% of the vote during the last three election cycles. Worse, still, 29.8% of multi-candidate primaries were won with less than 40%,” according to a Common Cause/NY primer.