TOO CLOSE TO CALL
City Council District 31 special election will be fi rst NYC race decided by ranked-choice voting
BY JACOB KAYE AND CLARISSA SOSSIN
The city’s first true test of rankedchoice
voting began to take shape Tuesday,
Feb. 23, as results from the special
election in City Council District 31
began to trickle in.
Though Selvena Brooks-Powers currently
leads the count as of Wednesday
morning, Feb. 24, as it currently stands,
none of the nine candidates in the race
– Brooks-Powers, Nancy Martinez,
LaToya Benjamin, Latanya Collins,
Sherwyn James, Nicole Lee, Pesach
Osina, Shawn Rux or Manuel Silva –
have secured more than 50 percent of
the vote, triggering a ranked-choice
voting recount.
Brooks-Powers secured 38 percent
of the vote (2,613 votes), with 97 percent
of scanners reported as of Wednesday
morning, while Osina is close behind
with 35 percent of the vote (2,406 votes),
according to unofficial results from the
city’s Board of Elections. Silva is the
only other candidate to have received
more than 10 percent of the vote (10.1
percent, 694 votes).
The candidate with the fewest
votes, which at this time appears to be
Lee, will be eliminated and the second
round of counting will begin in the coming
weeks. The approximately 60 voters
who selected Lee as their first choice
will see their ballots go to the candidate
they marked as their second choice. The
new totals will be counted and the process
will repeat itself until a candidate
surpasses the 50 percent threshold.
“I want to thank all those who voted
today and participated in our democracy,
and I want to thank all of my supporters
who made this possible. I am a
daughter of southeast Queens, and the
momentum and support for my candidacy
has been so empowering,” Brooks-
Powers said Tuesday night. “While
there was substantial confusion about
ranked-choice voting, these early results
are promising and I look forward
to all of the votes being counted. Our
community deserves to have a fighter
in City Hall to ensure we can recover
from this pandemic and finally get our
fair share. Today we have completed the
campaign for the special election, and
now we must move forward, complete
the counting and make sure every voice
is heard.”
During a Zoom party after the polls
closed Tuesday night, Brooks-Powers
expressed confidence that she would be
named the winner of the election.
“I’m so excited at the fact that I am
going to be elected into the City Council
and I feel humbled, I feel blessed and I
feel appreciative,” she said, adding that
she will “wait through this process for
all the votes to be counted.”
Osina, who finished second in the
special election to fill the seat in 2013,
when he lost by fewer than 100 votes,
Selvena Brooks-Powers casts her ballot at Pilgrim Church in Arverne on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
again found himself in second place
Tuesday night. However, unlike in 2013,
Osina could see himself bounce back in
the race once the second round of counting
is completed.
“We’re watching the returns and we
feel we’ve run a great campaign and we
await the final results,” Osina said in a
statement Tuesday night.
The winner of the Feb. 23 special
election will unlikely be determined
anytime soon, as the city’s Board of
Elections won’t begin the next count
until they’ve received all absentee and
military ballots. Only then will the second
round of counting begin, a process
that will be open to the public to watch.
Though Tuesday’s election is not the
first in the city’s history to utilize the
TIMESLEDGER | QNS.22 COM | FEB. 26-MARCH 4, 2021
new voting system – that distinction goes
to the special election in District 24 – it is
the first to go into the second count.
City Councilman James Gennaro
received around 60 percent of the vote
during the District 24 special election
on Feb. 2, negating the need for a second
round of counting. The results of the
race were certified on Feb. 18 and Gennaro
was sworn in to the seat he held from
2001 until 2013 that same day.
Candidates in both Tuesday’s election
and the Feb. 2 election in District
24, expressed concerns over the extent
to which the public has been informed
about the new system.
Brooks-Powers noted that she
heard the two Queens races referred
to as “guinea pigs,” a term she found
alarming.
“I find that problematic, obviously,”
Brooks-Powers told QNS before the polls
closed Tuesday. “These are races that
will impact the day-to-day quality of life
of hundreds of thousands of people.”
The entire city will utilize rankedchoice
voting during the June primary
elections, which will feature a large
slate of candidates for mayor, comptroller,
public advocate and more than 110
candidates for City Council in Queens
alone.
Turnout in Tuesday’s election was
relatively low, with around 7,000 ballots
cast in-person and around 1,700 cast
early, accounting for around 7 percent
of the approximately 102,580 registered
voters in the City Council district.
However, voters will get a second
and third shot at voting for a council
member in the district this year.
The winner of the special election
will serve until the end of 2021, when
Richards’ council term was set to end.
A primary election in June – likely to
feature many, if not all of the candidates
who ran in Tuesday’s election – and a
general election in November will send
a council member to the seat to serve
until 2023.
The race for District 31, which covers
parts of Arverne, Brookville, Edgemere,
Far Rockaway, Laurelton, Rosedale and
Springfield Gardens, was first triggered
when Richards, who has served the district
in the council since 2013, won the
special election for Queens borough
president.
SELVENA BROOKS-POWERS PESACH OSINA