Brian Lehrer: The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone and it's our Informal, Unofficial, Thoroughly Unscientific Primary Day Exit Poll. Who did you choose for mayor of New York, for New York City comptroller, for Manhattan DA, for borough president in whatever borough you are in, for your local city council seat, or any other race on the ballot today? 646-435-7280, 646-435- 7280, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Some tweets that are coming in, somebody tweeting as @BrooklynBridge tweets, "Early voted for a Garcia. New York Times," which endorsed her, "Would be PO-ed she hooked up with Yang."

Somebody else tweeted, "We need to open primaries to independents. I'm independent and I have to vote for whoever you guys," meaning registered Democrats and Republicans, "Pick in the primary." Remember voters that, that is a rule. You have to be registered within a party. Different states have different rules about primaries. In New York, you have to be registered in that party to vote in that party's primary.

Another listener tweeting as @ZBF tweets, "Ranked-choice voting felt like betting on horses. If my boxed trifecta wins, do I get an extension on my unemployment benefits?" We'll take more of your tweets and more of your calls as we go along here. While more calls are coming in, with me for a few minutes now is Susan Lerner, Executive Director of the good government group, Common Cause New York. She's been out in Brooklyn this morning and is a big proponent of ranked-choice voting. Hey, Susan thanks for a few Election Day minutes. Welcome back to WNYC.

Susan Lerner: Always happy to speak with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Your group has been a proponent of ranked-choice voting. Do you think it's affecting this election for the better from what you can tell so far?

Susan Lerner: We've been out and about, and voters are telling us that ranked-choice voting is simple and easy to use, and some voters have told us that they've been more engaged because they have researched the candidates in order to rank them.

Brian Lehrer: To play devil's advocate, under the old system, what we might see tonight is let's say Eric Adams first and Katherine Garcia second, for example, if it follows the recent polls, and neither of them gets more than 40% of the vote, the top two finishers have a runoff election, one-on-one over the next few weeks. What's so bad about that, that we needed to scrap it for this complicated ranked-choice voting system?

Susan Lerner: Well, it's not a complicated ranked-choice voting system. It's very straightforward from the voters' point of view when they go to fill in their ballot. The thing about the runoffs are they are very expensive. They decrease turnout. The people who actually come out to vote in a runoff is a much smaller number of voters and it tends to skew whiter and older. What have with ranked-choice voting is an incident runoff system so you don't see that drop-off.

Brian Lehrer: Talk to me about Garcia and Yang co-campaigning the last few days. In the context of ranked-choice voting as you know it from past experiences in other states, what are they actually trying to do as a matter of strategy and as a matter of ranked-choice voting math?

Susan Lerner: Ranked-choice voting is a system that encourages candidates to collaborate and form alliances in order to better educate voters. It's a perfectly legitimate strategy that we see across the country with ranked-choice voting, and it's a positive development, not anything negative or untoward. It's used extensively, and it's a good thing from the voters' point of view.

Brian Lehrer: As a matter of math, how does that potentially make it harder for Eric Adams to win? Which seems to be the point because he was in the lead. There's a mathematical strategy here for Yang and Garcia to team up for one or the other presumably to prevail. I think it's not clear to people why that would actually work, especially if people were splitting up their first-choice votes between Yang and Garcia.

Susan Lerner: From the voters' point of view, again, this is more information to the voters and there is no one guaranteed strategy to, somehow or other, gain ranked-choice voting. This is reaching out to the maximum number of voters and providing them with the choices. It's up to the voters at the end of the day to choose who they want to rank and how they rank them.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Susan, can you walk us through the timeline of how the votes will be counted and reported? I think people will be really interested in this and they're just getting their minds around after voting, what's going to happen then? Starting with tonight, what will we know tonight?

Susan Lerner: Tonight, we will know all of the first-choice votes as if it were an old-fashioned first-past-the-post election. What we won't have will be any of the rankings because there's too much data to quickly transmit to a central location to run any incomplete rounds. What we'll see tonight will be the first choices from all of the voters who voted in person. That's early and in-election day. Today. In a week when the board of elections has collected all of the machines back and able to remove the unofficial thumb drives and aggregate all of the rankings, for only the in-person votes, then they'll run the ranked-choice voting rounds on that incomplete number of votes, and will release an unofficial incomplete set of rounds.

A week later when they've added in some, but not all, of the absentee ballots, they will run another set of incomplete unofficial rounds. If they haven't started the official count in another week, they'll again, run the rounds on as many votes as they have. It won't be the complete count. Somewhere in July when they have tallied all of the eligible absentee votes, they will be able to run the complete rounds and certify the winner.

Brian Lehrer: Why does it take that long to tally the absentee votes? They have to be postmarked by today, they have to be received by a week from today, June 29th, and yet you're saying it's not going to be till the week of July 12th that they probably counted all the rankings on the absentee ballots. Why does it take that long?

Susan Lerner: Well for two reasons. Remember, Brian, this is a requirement of state law. This is not anything which New York city or ranked-choice voting requires. These are protections that are built into state law to be sure that only eligible votes are counted and that no absentee voter is unduly disenfranchised. First, there's a seven-day grace period to receive the absentee ballot so that no vote is discounted because of a delay in the postal service. There is a seven-business day cure period. If the voter makes a curable mistake on their absentee ballot oath envelope, that's the inner envelope that they have to sign date, and seal with their absentee ballot inside, the board of elections gives them notice, "Hey you made an error that you could fix." Then they have seven business days which gets us into July, and you have to get past the July 4th holiday. Therefore that time period ends on July 9th which is a Friday. The count's not going to start at the beginning of a weekend, and then we're at July 12th. Now if voters respond and queue at the ballots quicker, then I'm sure the counts will start earlier.

Brian Lehrer: As one little sidelight, after being here to cover this mayoral race almost every day since January, knowing that Primary Day was June 22nd, I scheduled my vacation for the week of July 12th. It sounds like, after all of this coverage, I'm not going to be here when we actually know who won the mayoral primary, so it goes. Last thing, how does the turnout look to you so far based on the early and the mail-in votes. Did ranked-choice or did moving the primary from September to June work to engage people more as far as you could tell so far?

Susan Lerner: It's been relatively quiet. It's very hard to tell until we see the actual numbers of how many people came out to vote. There's so many different factors that influence turnout, that it's hard to say one thing or another did or didn't improve turnout. It's been relatively quiet.

Brian Lehrer: Susan Lerner, who leads the New York state chapter of the good-government group, Common Cause. Thank you so much for giving us all this context for what's going on today. Susan, thanks a lot.

Susan Lerner: My pleasure.

Brian Lehrer: Now back to your calls and tweets on our Informal, Unofficial, Thoroughly Unscientific Primary Day Exit Poll here on the Brian Lehrer show. Who did you choose for mayor of New York or in any other race? How did ranked-choice voting go for you? What was your top issue? Electioneering, welcome here at 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Sam in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi Sam. Thanks for calling in.

Sam: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for all the information you've provided since, you've said January, though it feels like a lot longer, this campaign.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for that. I see you're calling partly about a city council race. You want to start with mayor though?

Sam: Sure. I had a list of the five I liked the most all long over the last couple of months but really it came down to just this past weekend when I finally locked in the positions of all five. I ended up putting Maya Wiley as number one, and I was careful to not rank the people I didn't like, and rank the more tolerable candidates lower down in the four and five spot.

Brian Lehrer: Who would you put number two?

Sam: Number two, I put Dianne Morales.

Brian Lehrer: You were ideologically consistent with your top two leaning into the most progressive?

Sam: And Stringer at three. I had Stringer higher at one point. I guess part of what makes ranked-choice interesting to me is that you can do an aspirational vote, and I really like Morales. As a candidate, I also think she's unlikely to win just in my mind, but it's nice to be able to give someone who I really like a vote, and know that the three spot for Scott stringer is still a good vote for him.

Brian Lehrer: If you voted for the most progressive candidates, one, two, and three, how much of that was because of the police reform issue per se, or more like a collection of issues?

Sam: A collection of issues, certainly. I think that Scott Stringer, to start with, he's been a progressive for a long time. This term progressive is much more in vogue now. I think Scott's someone who's been doing it for all of his career. What I was most interested in about Scott was his experience because I think experience even more than-- A friend of mine said to me, "Talk to me about your experience first and your ideology second." I think that's an interesting way to look at this election, and Scott Stringer has both of those. I think that when it comes down to my personal values, that I really like Maya Wiley's take on things like the NYPD, but more than just that. I think that she is experienced enough in the pool of candidates to do a good job.

Brian Lehrer: Sam, I know you wanted to talk about your local city council race as well. Tell everybody where in Queens you live and how you made a decision in that race.

Sam: I live in District 26, which is Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Dutch Kills. It's all the way from the East River. Starts right at the East River below the Queensboro Bridge. It's a truly diverse district. It's 15 candidates that we have for our ranked-choice in our council race. As I said, progressive, is this term that we're using now, and I think all of the candidates-- maybe not all but most of them, their posters in their mailers, they say, "Progressive track record, progressive leader," and that you really have to be again to decide of these 15, who are the five that are actually worthwhile in terms of being more than just progressive, because I actually believe that they are progressive, that we share similar policy, priorities and that kind of thing. You've got to dig deeper to know who can actually do the work and what their background is.

Brian Lehrer: Your candidate is?

Sam: I voted number one for Amit Bagga. He has the most experience in New York City government in our district in the race. I think it's 10 or 12 years of city government experience. He established the IDNYC, and he ran the census campaign. He's someone who's testified at city council and who's worked in city agencies as a high-level official. The other candidates in my race, they don't have as much of that, not nearly as much. While some of the other candidates, I agree with politically, Amit is someone who I trust will start the job and start running. Also, so many city council seats are up for grabs right now in this race. It's going to be a really green group in terms of freshmen class sense of a council. It's nice that so many newcomers will be there, but I also want to vote for someone who's going to know the job.

Brian Lehrer: With some experience. Sam, thank you very much for your call. We really appreciate it. That District 26 race in Western Queens certainly is one to watch with the 15 candidates. It's mind-boggling. Once you get through 13 candidates for mayor and 10 candidates or so for a comptroller and everything else, then sorting out the 15 candidates on your ballot for city council, it takes a committed citizen like that last caller is, obviously is no matter which candidate you land on, to even go through all that and come out with your choices. Hopefully, you are all doing that in your districts today. Let's go next to Veritas in Jamaica, Queens. Veritas, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Veritas: Thank you. I just like to say, NPR is my oxygen. I listen to you night and day. It's the voice of truth in a world of mendacity. Now, the reason I'm calling is, I take voting very seriously, I like to be thoroughly prepared, and I rely on the Queens voter guide sent to me. I do my research using the voter guide. I write everything down, so when I fill out my ballot, I have everything ready. This year I was horrified that a candidate that is one of my top choices was left out completely from the voter guide. I'm very skeptical, because I don't think it's an innocent error. I think that there's something underhanded going on. This is a candidate that's very controversial and she has a lot of enemies because she is completely dedicated to improving-- This is the city council position. Now, normally James Gennaro is the incumbent and he has a big following and she's trying to unseat him. I was just very worried that they didn't do this ethically by leaving her name out. [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: We're not going to be able to determine whether there was some shady business among the people who write the city voters guide that comes to our mailboxes, but you can at least get to say the name of the candidate who was left out and that you are voting for.

Veritas: I'd be happy to. It's Moumita Ahmed. The other glaring omission, they left out the whole category of the civil court judges. I was very surprised at that. That was another glaring omission. In any case, if you want to know my choices, I voted for Kathryn as first choice and Maya Wiley for second choice for mayor. The person that I really have confidence in is the person who's running for public advocate. I was listening to him being interviewed by Ben Max on Gotham. I was so impressed with his dedication and I voted for him for public advocate. I think he's one of the most sincere devoted person that I've come across.

Brian Lehrer: Of the three citywide elected officials, mayor, comptroller, and public advocate, the reason nobody's talking about the public advocate race is because Jumaane Williams who I presume you're talking about was just--

Veritas: I think he's awful. I think he hasn't done anything. He refuses to cooperate with anybody. I'm very upset with him.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I thought that's who you were talking about. The end of the thought that I was starting is that he's considered a shoo-in. He was just recently elected to the position in a special election, so he's not term-limited out of course. He also was considered a shoo-in and doesn't seem to have serious competition in this primary. Who's the candidate who you liked?

Veritas: I love Theo Chino. He's far better. He has reached out to Jumaane to cooperate with them, and Jumaane does not respond to him. I'm a theatre person, so I see Jumaane all the time acting in play with the Theater of War company. He should stick to acting because he's not doing a diligent job whatsoever as public advocate. I've called his office many times, nobody from his office responds, just the way he doesn't respond to serious people who want to work with him and improve the job of the public advocate. This Theo Chino did research and found all sorts of categories that are completely not being used by the Office of Public Advocate, which can help New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Veritas, thank you very much for your call. There's one against Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. A couple of notes before we go on to our next caller. A few of you are asking for me to repeat the Meet Your Mayor tool that one of our callers mentioned earlier. That's on the new site, THE CITY, thecity.nyc. They have this thing, if you're still undecided at this very late date in making up your mind for mayor and you want to see who you line up with on the issues most closely. THE CITY, which is a great nonprofit news organization has this tool called Meet Your Mayor. It'll ask you where you are in various issues and then give you your incident rankings if you want to do it that way. Since a few people asked, the meet Your Mayor tool on thecity.nyc. David in Bayside you're on WNYC, as we finish a Queen's trifecta here, after the caller from Western Queens, a caller from Jamaica, and now we go to Eastern Queens. David in Bayside, thank you for calling in.

David: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I live in Bayside. I'm a parent, so also part of my decision. I want to make a point that I think is really, really important. I'm so happy to make this point on behalf of middle-class families in New York City. My first choice was was Yang, and my second choice was Eric Adams. There is a sense among a lot of middle-class families in Queens that progressive politics is not for them. It's not pro-middle-class families. I have never seen so many for-sale signs in our neighborhoods, and when you speak to these people out here, and these are multi-racial, multi-ethnic families of all backgrounds, hard-working families with children, there's a sense that after two terms of Deblasio, that the city is not for them anymore. They want to move to Long Island, they want to move to New Jersey, Westchester. Their feeling is that when it comes to public safety, education, quality of life, that we are being left out, and that there has been this almost radicalization of our city that does not really take us into account anymore.

Criminals, people that want to do bad things are emboldened by progressive politics. They feel like they can get a free pass. They hear stories of defund the police, closing down of jails. We want a mayor that is going to rebuild the relationship with the police department of the city that really is the most one of the most important things. We have to keep our streets safe and keep crime down. It's just an interesting point that progressive politics has become such a buzzword in a positive sense, but there's a lot of people in the city that I feel like are not being heard. Again, multiracial families, ethnic families, not necessarily-- This isn't a rich-poor thing. This is families that just are hardworking people with children that want the best for them that feel like they're being left out.

Brian Lehrer: Now certainly the people on the progressive side of the ledger, who would identify with that label would say they are progressive on behalf of the people who they felt have been left out for so so long in terms of income inequality, the outcome of education and the public school system, policing that wound up in mass incarceration, all those things. Not that we can have that big, big conversation in the context of the primary day exit poll, but that's what they would say on their side.

David: Yes. It's a philosophical discussion, and it's very much there. Of course, there are problems that need to be addressed with homelessness, and poverty, and mass incarceration, but also, we don't really hear much about the middle class from these candidates. We are a huge part of the city, and we are an important part of the city. As Biden said when he was running and got the nomination over Bernie Sanders, "We don't want somebody to come in and make a revolution. We just want somebody to make our lives better." He ended up being successful. It's interesting to think about it.

Brian Lehrer: Yet you consider yourself a Democrat, not a Republican, it sounds like.

David: 100%. 100% Democrat. I'm a hardworking Democrat, pro-family, pro-education, loves the city, doesn't want to move but I want a mayor that is going to be somebody for all people, not just hardcore progressives.

Brian Lehrer: Are you tempted to vote Republican in any context with considering who you said is being left out? Because that would be their line too.

David: Not considering Republican. I am a tried and true Democrat, but I want the right Democrat in there. I feel like everything I've heard, it's Andrew Yang and Eric Adams and I'm also obviously very interesting in Kathryn Garcia. She had a lot of great ideas, but I want to stay away from a radical candidate who I feel is going to drive more of the middle class out of New York City.

Brian Lehrer: You ranked Yang first and Adam second.

David: Yes, I did. And Garcia third.

Brian Lehrer: How'd you choose even between them? Why Yang, over Adams, over Garcia?

David: Interesting. I feel like Adams probably has the best chance of winning, but I do love the energy of Yang and the vibrancy. I feel like in New York City, there's a great Renaissance coming with the pandemic coming to an end. I liked his ideas. I feel like Yang would bring a fresh new approach to governing in New York City, but I would also be thrilled to have Eric Adams as well.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you one more thing, David. Who'd you vote for a comptroller if you chose in that race?

David: Corey Johnson.

Brian Lehrer: ] David, thank you so much. Please call us again. Our Informal, Unofficial, Thoroughly Unscientific Primary Day Exit Poll continues in a minute. We'll also be joined by Juan Manuel Benitez from New York One. Stay with us.

[00:27:34] [END OF AUDIO]

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