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      Don’t Overthink Ranked-Choice Voting, New York City

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      Last month this board endorsed Kathryn Garcia for mayor of New York City and urged voters to cast a ballot for her in the June 22 Democratic primary. (Early voting begins June 12.)Normally, that would be the end of it. But this year’s ballot looks different, for mayor and for other citywide races. Instead of having only one choice in each race, New York City voters have the opportunity to rank up to five candidates, in order of preference.Ranked-choice voting, as it’s known, has been in use for decades around the world and has been gaining popularity around the United States recently. That’s for good reason: It allows voters to vote for candidates they genuinely like best, it forces candidates to appeal to more voters than they might in a traditional election, and it results in a winner who is acceptable to a majority of the electorate.The whole point of representative democracy is — or should be — to elect leaders who are chosen by a broad cross-section of voters and who are responsive to all of them. This matters all the more today, when distortions like partisan gerrymandering have warped the relationship between voters and their representatives.New York City, which adopted ranked-choice voting by referendum in 2019, is so far the largest jurisdiction in the country to give it a try. This year’s Democratic primary is just what the system was designed for. A large and diverse slate of candidates, none of whom seem likely to pull away from the pack and win an outright majority in the first count, is an ideal scenario for ranked-choice voting to play out.Still, many New Yorkers remain confused or apprehensive about the new system. Here’s how it works in practice, and here are the two key things to keep in mind when you go to fill out your ballot.First, vote with your heart, at least for your top choice. Don’t try to game the system or do mental gymnastics about your rankings. The great thing about ranked-choice voting, in contrast to the traditional first-past-the-post method, is that you have the freedom to vote for the candidate you like best and still have a say in the outcome if that candidate doesn’t win.Second, it’s best if you fill in your ballot completely, which means ranking five candidates, not one or two or three. You’re not required to do this, but if you do, the system works better. If you don’t and the candidate or candidates you rank are eliminated, your ballot stops counting. Filling in all five rankings eliminates this problem of “exhausted ballots,” and it guarantees your voice will count in the choosing of the next mayor — even if that person wasn’t your first (or second or third) choice.It’s also a good idea to include at least one of the front-runners on your ballot, even if you put him or her at the very bottom. That way you are more likely to have a say all the way to the end.What does this mean for the 2021 mayoral race and how you should fill out your ballot?If you agree with us that Ms. Garcia should get the job, rank her first. If you prefer another candidate, rank that person first. After that, rank the other candidates you like — or whom you could at least live with being mayor — in order of your preference.Whichever candidates you choose, be patient. There is a good chance New Yorkers won’t know on election night who their next mayor will be. It could take a few weeks to get a final result, in fact.Not only can ranked-choice ballots take longer to tabulate, but New York, after decades of operating in the electoral Dark Ages, has also finally adopted several modern voting reforms, including early voting and no-excuse absentee voting. Absentee ballots are allowed to arrive up to a week after the election, and voters have seven business days to fix any problems that might invalidate their ballots. Because so many people are expected to vote absentee this year, those ballots may be decisive in one or more races.The city plans to release first-choice totals from early votes and Election Day votes on election night. One week later, it will release a ranked-choice tally of those ballots plus any absentee ballots that have arrived and been processed, which could result in a different candidate taking the lead.As soon as all absentee ballots are in and errors are fixed, the city needs to promptly release all results. A bill under consideration in Albany would provide public access to the raw digital data of ballots within a week after an election, allowing anyone to run that data through a ranked-choice software program and get a result. (The bill has passed the Senate and is waiting for a vote in the assembly.)The bottom line: Don’t overthink things. Vote for your favored candidates, in the order you prefer them. Fill in your whole ballot.This year’s mayoral election is perhaps the most consequential in a generation, so it’s fitting that voters will have an opportunity to decide that election in a new and more democratic way. By adopting ranked-choice voting, New Yorkers gave themselves more of a voice in choosing their leaders. It’s time to use it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Voter Suppression Must Be the Central Issue

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      The right to vote is everything in a democracy.Without influence over power, you are completely vulnerable to that power. There is no way to access prosperity or ensure personal protection when you live in a society in which people who share your interests are inhibited in their political participation. More

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      What to Know About Virginia's Democratic Primaries

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      Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe is seeking his old job, and Democrats will square off in races for lieutenant governor and attorney general.WASHINGTON — Virginia Democrats go to the polls on Tuesday to determine their candidates in races ranging from governor to the State House, but the onset of summer isn’t the only reason this year’s primary season has been sleepy.Taking place just months after a presidential election, nominating contests in Virginia often reflect the mood of the electorate. And if this year’s primary never seemed to get off the ground, it was in part because many voters are burned out on politics after four convulsive years of the Trump administration, a bitter 2020 campaign and a coronavirus pandemic that is only now receding.The most dedicated political aficionados have still followed the 2021 races in Virginia. However, former President Donald J. Trump’s ongoing refusal to acknowledge defeat, the storming of the Capitol and the subsequent impeachment inquiry diverted attention from state politics in a way that effectively delayed the start of the primary and starved former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s opponents in the governor’s race of political oxygen.This was all manna from heaven for the once and potentially future governor, Mr. McAuliffe, who was succeeded by Gov. Ralph Northam in 2018 because Virginia is the last state in America to bar governors from serving for consecutive terms.Wielding perhaps the two most powerful weapons in a statewide primary — name recognition and cash on hand — Mr. McAuliffe has staked out a wide lead in the polls against four Democrats who are comparatively little-known and lightly financed: Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, State Senator Jennifer McClellan, State Delegate Lee Carter and former State Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy.But just because Mr. McAuliffe appears poised to claim the nomination on Tuesday for his old job does not mean the results won’t be revealing.Here’s what to watch for in the Democratic races. (Virginia Republicans nominated their ticket last month, with Glenn Youngkin, a self-funding former private equity executive, emerging as the party’s nominee for governor.)How many voters will turn out?In 2009, Virginia Democrats had a hotly contested primary for governor that included two candidates from the vote-rich Washington suburbs, but only 319,000 voters cast ballots. In 2017, more than 543,000 Virginians voted in the Democratic primary for governor.The ultimate difference in those two election cycles: Twelve years ago, in the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s election, Republicans would claim the governorship, while four years ago, Democrats rode a wave of anti-Trump energy to sweep all three state offices: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.“We need not have Donald Trump in the White House for our people to get out and vote, because Trumpism is alive and well in the Virginia Republican Party,” said Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn of the State House, a Democrat who was elevated to her position when, in 2019, another anti-Trump wave swept her party to the majority.Republicans, and some Democrats, are not convinced, especially given the G.O.P.’s nomination of Mr. Youngkin, a Northern Virginia businessman with roots in Hampton Roads.Without the one-man Democratic turnout lever that was Mr. Trump still in the Oval Office, can the party still overwhelm Republicans in the suburbs, where Virginia elections are often decided?Overall turnout on Tuesday will offer some initial clues.Terry McAuliffe, a former governor, has staked out a wide lead in the polls against four Democrats who are comparatively little-known and lightly financed.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesCan Terry McAuliffe win a majority?Capturing a majority of the vote in a five-way race can be difficult. But Mr. McAuliffe has so dominated the primary that it’s possible he can crack 50 percent. While it’s admittedly an arbitrary figure, a majority would represent a strong vote of confidence in Mr. McAuliffe.He appears well positioned to reach that threshold. He has claimed endorsements from much of Virginia’s Democratic establishment, including Mr. Northam, who’s now highly popular among Democrats despite his infamous blackface scandal in 2019. And despite running against three Black candidates, Mr. McAuliffe has also received endorsements from many of the state’s prominent African-American leaders.He has run as the de facto incumbent, linking his governorship and that of Mr. Northam to trumpet the last eight years and the broader Democratic takeover of Virginia. Republicans have not won a statewide race since 2009 and are now in the minority of both chambers of the General Assembly.“We’re a new state today,” Mr. McAuliffe said last week during a stop at a pie shop in Arlington, recalling what he called the “anti-women, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-immigrant, pro-gun” Republican legislature when he took office in 2014.The question is whether his popularity, and the credit he gets from Democrats for Virginia’s transformation, is enough to run away with a race against a field that includes younger, more diverse and more progressive opponents.Will there be a suburban surge?The Virginia suburbs outside Washington used to be strikingly different from the rest of the state. “Occupied territory” was the joke residents who lived south of the Rappahannock River would make about the more transient, less culturally Southern communities outside the nation’s capital.But now far more of Virginia resembles Northern Virginia. In their demographics and, increasingly, their politics, the population hubs of Richmond and Hampton Roads are closer to Arlington than Abingdon.This is all to say that Mr. McAuliffe’s performance and the overall turnout are worth watching most closely in the so-called urban crescent, stretching from Northern Virginia down Interstate 95 to Richmond and then east on I-64 to Hampton Roads.Are these Democrats a) enthusiastic to vote and b) eager to support an older, more moderate contender? They were in the 2017 primary, when Mr. Northam fended off a challenge from his left by former Representative Tom Perriello, but Tuesday will tell us more about the state of the party in the precincts that have turned Virginia blue.Primaries for the nomination for lieutenant governor and other state offices are also on the ballot on Tuesday.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesWhat about the down-ballot races?Races for governor always get the most attention in Virginia’s year-after-the-presidential-election contests because they can be a handy temperature check on the electorate. Backlashes are often first detected here. In fact, until Mr. McAuliffe’s 2013 victory, Virginia had a decades-long streak of electing a governor of the opposite party from the occupant of the White House.But the other two races for statewide office, lieutenant governor and attorney general, are also worth keeping tabs on.The primary for the state’s No. 2 job is sprawling, with six candidates running. Three state lawmakers — Sam Rasoul, Hala Ayala and Mark Levine — have the most money. Ms. Ayala enjoys the support of Mr. Northam, and Mr. Rasoul would be the first Muslim elected to statewide office in Virginia.While the job brings few official duties beyond breaking ties in the State Senate, it’s coveted by up-and-coming politicians because, given Virginia’s one-and-done rule for governors, it can be a quick steppingstone to the top job. Former Govs. Charles S. Robb, L. Douglas Wilder and Tim Kaine, as well as Mr. Northam, followed that route.Attorney general can also be a launching pad for governor — the joke being that A.G. stands for Almost Governor — and that’s what many believed Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, would be running for this year. But with Mr. McAuliffe seeking the governorship, Mr. Herring, who had his own blackface scandal in 2019, decided to seek what would be a third term.He drew a challenge from a young, Black state lawmaker, Jay Jones, who picked up the support of Mr. Northam. Mr. Herring, though, has outraised Mr. Jones and has benefited from stronger name recognition. In a primary season that was slow to start and never seemed to fully flower, that could prove enough. More

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      German Conservatives Appear to Lead in Last State Election Before National Vote

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      The contest in an eastern state, a stronghold of the Alternative for Germany, had been closely watched for signs of the far-right party’s appeal.BERLIN — Voters in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt appeared in a Sunday vote to support a return of the ruling conservatives, which made strong gains in a contest that had been closely watched for signs of a far-right party’s strength months ahead of a national election.Initial partial returns suggested that the conservative Christian Democratic Union were poised to break a losing streak in state ballots and expand their past margins over the nationalist Alternative for Germany, or AfD.Although Saxony-Anhalt is one of the country’s smallest states, with only 1.8 million people eligible to cast ballots, many Germans were looking to Sunday’s vote for indications about the national election for a new Parliament on Sept. 26.The outcome on Sunday could bolster the campaign of Armin Laschet, the current leader of the Christian Democrats, who is hoping to replace Angela Merkel. She is stepping down after 16 years in office as chancellor.Mr. Laschet, 60, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, has struggled to gain traction across the country, especially in the states of the former East Germany, and the strong showing for his party in the last regional election before the national ballot could give his contest a boost.“Today is a clear win for the Christian Democrats,” said Volker Bouffier, the governor of the western state of Hesse and a senior member of the conservative party. “But the fight is still at the beginning, the fight for the democratic center.”Despite the conservatives’ apparent ability to attract more support, the early partial returns suggested that AfD remained firmly the second most popular party in the state, a position it won five years ago when it received nearly a quarter of votes in the Saxony-Anhalt state election, shocking the country and propelling the party from the far-right nationalist fringe onto the national stage.The following year, the AfD won more than 12 percent in the national election, becoming the largest opposition party in the national Parliament, with 88 seats.A polling place at an art history museum in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, on Sunday.John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSince then, Alternative for Germany has struggled to contend with a more extremist wing that has pulled the party branch in Saxony-Anhalt even further to the right, capturing the attention of the country’s domestic intelligence service. The state’s leaders in the party, along with those from the branches in Brandenburg and Thuringia, are under official scrutiny for their anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim statements. Whether the AfD at the national level will also be placed under observation is on hold, pending the outcome of a legal challenge.While much about the Saxony-Anhalt contest is unique to the region, heavily focused on local issues like schools and economic restructuring, a majority of voters told pollsters with infratest.dimap on Sunday they were satisfied with the work of their governor, Reiner Haseloff, a member of the Christian Democrats who sought to clearly distance his party from the AfD.“I am thankful that our image remains, we have a reputation of democracy here in Saxony-Anhalt that we upheld tonight,” Mr. Haseloff said after initial projections had shown his party the clear winner of the evening.Mr. Haseloff has been a strong champion of the states in eastern Germany, home to many regions that are still struggling with the fallout from economic restructuring more than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.The persistent lack of jobs and economic infrastructure in those states, and a feeling that traditional parties do not take their concerns seriously, were other key factors that led many voters to shift their support to the AfD five years ago. That result forced Mr. Haseloff to form a coalition government across a wide political spectrum, including the center-left Social Democrats as well as the environmentalist Greens, in an effort to keep the far-right in the opposition.On Sunday, the Social Democrats suffered one of their worst showings in a state election, while the Greens were able to gain marginal support in the region, where they have traditionally struggled to attract voters.The other winner of the state ballot, along with the conservatives, appeared to be the pro-business Free Democratic Party, which voters returned to the statehouse for the first time in a decade. More

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      Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach

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      A new report, in perhaps the most thorough soul-searching done by either party this year, points to an urgent need for the party to present a positive economic agenda and rebut Republican misinformation.Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.The 70-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.Read the reportThree prominent Democratic groups, Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, conducted a review of the 2020 election.Read Document 73 pagesIn part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina.Overall, the report warns, Democrats in 2020 lacked a core argument about the economy and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic — one that might have helped candidates repel Republican claims that they wanted to “keep the economy shut down,” or worse. The party “leaned too heavily on ‘anti-Trump’ rhetoric,” the report concludes.“Win or lose, self-described progressive or moderate, Democrats consistently raised a lack of strong Democratic Party brand as a significant concern in 2020,” the report states. “In the absence of strong party branding, the opposition latched on to G.O.P. talking points, suggesting our candidates would ‘burn down your house and take away the police.’”Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who lost re-election in South Florida in November, said in an interview that she had spoken with the authors of the report and raised concerns about Democratic outreach to Hispanic voters and the party’s failure to rebut misinformation in Spanish-language media.“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has in some ways lost touch with our electorate,” Ms. Mucarsel-Powell said. “There is this assumption that of course people of color, or the working class, are going to vote for Democrats. We can never assume anything.”The report, chiefly written by a pair of veteran Democratic operatives, Marlon Marshall and Lynda Tran, is among the most significant salvos yet in the Democratic Party’s internal debate about how it should approach the 2022 elections. It may stir skepticism from some quarters because of the involvement of Third Way, which much of the left regards with hostility.A fourth group that initially backed the study, the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United, backed away this spring. Tiffany Muller, the head of the group, said it had to abandon its involvement to focus instead on passing the For the People Act, a sweeping good-government bill that is stuck in the Senate.Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, lost re-election in South Florida last year. She remains worried about her party’s outreach to Hispanic voters.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMr. Marshall and Ms. Tran, as well as the groups sponsoring the review, have begun to share its conclusions with Democratic lawmakers and party officials in recent days, including Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.The study spanned nearly six months of research and data analysis that scrutinized about three dozen races for the House and the Senate, and involved interviews with 143 people, including lawmakers, candidates and pollsters, people involved in assembling the report said. Among the campaigns reviewed were the Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as House races in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas, and in rural New Mexico and Maine.The study follows an internal review conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was unveiled last month. Both projects found that Democratic candidates had been hobbled by flawed polling and pandemic-imposed limitations on campaigning.In the D.C.C.C. report, the committee attributed setbacks at the congressional level to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to attacks calling them police-hating socialists.Some lawmakers on the left have complained that criticism of left-wing messaging amounts to scapegoating activists for the party’s failures.Yet the review by Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund goes further in diagnosing the party’s messaging as deficient in ways that may have cost Democrats more than a dozen seats in the House. Its report offers a blunt assessment that in 2020, Republicans succeeded in misleading voters about the Democratic Party’s agenda and that Democrats had erred by speaking to voters of color as though they are a monolithic, left-leaning group.Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who helms the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”“That’s been a ridiculous idea and that’s never been true,” Mr. Cárdenas said, lamenting that Republicans had succeeded in “trying to confuse Latino voters with the socialism message, things of that nature, ‘defund the police.’”Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that “some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats” had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to “defund” the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.“We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets,” Mr. James said. “That terminology — ‘defund’ — was not popular in the Black community.”A report by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attributed the party’s setbacks to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to Republican attacks.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesKara Eastman, a progressive Democrat who lost her bid for a House seat based in Omaha, said Republicans had succeeded in delivering a “barrage of messages” that tarred her and her party as being outside the mainstream. Ms. Eastman said she had told the authors of the 2020 review that she believed those labels were particularly damaging to women.Matt Bennett, a Third Way strategist, said the party needed to be far better prepared to mount a defense in the midterm campaign.“We have got to take very seriously these attacks on Democrats as radicals and stipulate that they land,” Mr. Bennett said. “A lot of this just didn’t land on Joe Biden.”Democrats maintained a large advantage with voters of color in the 2020 elections, but the report identified telling areas of weakness. Mr. Biden and other Democrats lost ground with Latino voters relative to the party’s performance in 2016, “especially among working-class and non-college voters in these communities,” the report found.The report found that a surge in Asian American turnout appeared to have secured Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia but that Democratic House candidates ran behind Mr. Biden with Asian American voters in contested California and Texas races. In some important states, Democrats did not mobilize Black voters at the same rate that Republicans did conservative white voters.“A substantial boost in turnout netted Democrats more raw votes from Black voters than in 2016, but the explosive growth among white voters in most races outpaced these gains,” the report warns.There has been no comparable self-review on the Republican side after the party’s severe setbacks last year, mainly because G.O.P. leaders have no appetite for a debate about Mr. Trump’s impact.Republicans will continue to have structural advantages in Washington because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College. Erin Scott for The New York TimesThe Republican Party faces serious political obstacles, arising from Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, the growing liberalism of young voters and the country’s growing diversity. Many of the party’s policies are unpopular, including cutting social-welfare and retirement-security programs and keeping taxes low for the wealthy and big corporations.Yet the structure of the American electoral system has tilted national campaigns toward the G.O.P., because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College.Democratic hopes for the midterm elections have so far hinged on the prospect of a strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and on voters’ regarding Republicans as a party unsuited to governing.Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who was briefed on the findings of the report, called it proof that the party needed a strong central message about the economy in 2022.“We need to continue to show the American people what we’ve done, and then talk incessantly across the country, in every town, about how Democrats are governing,” Ms. Sherrill said.Largely unaddressed in the report is the immense deficit Democrats face among lower-income white voters. In its conclusion, however, Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran write that Democrats need to deliver a message that includes working-class whites and matches the G.O.P.’s clear “collective gospel” about low taxes and military strength.“Our gospel should be about championing all working people — including but not limited to white working people — and lifting up our values of opportunity, equity, inclusion,” they write. More

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      State Election Officials Are Under Attack. We Will Defend Them.

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      Tucked into many of the election laws Republicans are pushing or enacting in states around the country are pernicious provisions threatening punishment of elections officials and workers for just doing their jobs.Laws like those already passed in Republican-controlled states like Georgia and Iowa, no matter their stated intent, will be used as a weapon of intimidation aimed at the people, many of them volunteers, charged with running fair elections at the local and state levels. By subjecting them to invasive, politically motivated control by a state legislative majority, these provisions shift the last word in elections from the pros to the pols. This is a serious attack on the crucial norm that our elections should be run on a professional, nonpartisan basis — and it is deeply wrong.It is so wrong that having once worked together across the partisan divide as co-chairs of the 2013-14 Presidential Commission on Election Administration, we have decided to come together again to mobilize the defense of election officials who may come under siege from these new laws.Bear in mind that this is happening after the 2020 election, run in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, went off much better than expected. Voter turnout was the highest since 1900. A senior official in the Trump administration pronounced it the “most secure election in American history,” with “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.” Multiple recounts, contests and court cases brought by former President Donald Trump and his allies failed to persuade any courts or state officials to overturn the results of any election.The new laws establish civil penalties for technical infractions and subject officials to threats of suspension and even criminal prosecution. Iowa state election officials are now subject to fines of $10,000 and suspension for any actions that “hinder or disregard the object of the law.” They are also subject to criminal penalties when seeking to address disruptive conduct by partisan poll watchers. In Georgia, an election official threatened with suspension may appeal, but the law restricts state-financed support for the individual’s legal defense. The Georgia secretary of state, the chief election official, has been removed from the chairmanship of the State Elections Board, demoted to nonvoting ex officio status.Other states are considering laws containing similar threats to the impartial administration of elections. It can be no surprise that officials around the country are also experiencing threats and harassment ranging from physical confrontation to social media postings of personal information from their Facebook pages. And this dangerous behavior is spreading throughout the electoral process. Last month, election officials in Anchorage, Alaska, issued a report describing the “unprecedented harassment of election officials” during the conduct of a mayoral runoff election.The partisan efforts to control election outcomes will result in the corruption of our system of government, which is rooted in fair, free elections. We say this as longtime election lawyers from opposing political parties. In jointly leading the presidential commission, we worked with numerous local and state elections officials. We saw firsthand the dedication and professionalism they brought to their jobs. They work hard with inadequate resources and are rarely praised for what goes well and are quickly blamed for what goes wrong.In 2020, after the pandemic struck, these officials performed the near-impossible task of locating replacements for thousands of poll workers, reconfiguring polling places to offer safe voting spaces for voters and poll workers and ramping up effective mail voting where allowed under state law.Now their nonpartisan performance of their duties is under attack — even to the point of being criminalized. So we are committed to providing these officials a defense against these attacks and threats by recruiting lawyers around the country, Democrats and Republicans, to establish a network that would provide free legal support to election officials who face threats, fines or suspensions for doing their jobs. This national network will monitor new threats as they develop and publicly report on what it learns.The defense of the electoral process is not a partisan cause, even where there may be reasonable disagreements between the parties about specific voting rules and procedures. The presidential commission we led concluded that “election administration is public administration” and that whenever possible, “the responsible department or agency in every state should have on staff individuals who are chosen and serve solely on the basis of their experience and expertise.” To serve voters, those officials would require independence from partisan political pressures, threats and retaliatory attacks.These state laws, and the blind rage against our election officials that they encourage or reinforce, will corrode our electoral systems and democracy. They will add to the recent lamentable trend of experienced officials’ retiring from their active and vitally needed service — clearing the way for others less qualified and more easily managed by partisans. Early surveys show that in our nation’s larger jurisdictions, up to a quarter of experienced election officials are planning to leave their jobs. A primary reason they cite: “the political environment.”No requirement of our electoral process — of our democracy — is more critical than the commitment to nonpartisanship in the administration of our system for casting and counting of ballots now being degraded by these state laws. This challenge must be strongly and forcefully met in every possible way by Democrats and Republicans alike.Bob Bauer, a former senior adviser to the Biden campaign, is a professor at New York University School of Law and a co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.” Ben Ginsberg practiced election law for 38 years representing Republican candidates and parties.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin’s Nihilistic Bipartisanship

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      We are in the eye of the storm of American democratic collapse. There is, outwardly, a feeling of calm. The Biden administration is competent and placid. The coronavirus emergency is receding nationally, if not internationally. Donald Trump, once the most powerful man on earth and the emperor of the news cycle, is now a failed blogger under criminal investigation. More

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      Key Question in NYC Mayoral Race: Who Will Get Latino New Yorkers’ Votes?

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      Hispanic voters, who may account for a fifth of turnout, are considered to be up for grabs.Eric Adams was not Representative Adriano Espaillat’s original choice to become New York City’s next mayor, but now that he had landed the coveted endorsement, Mr. Adams was in a forgiving mood.It was more of a come-to-Eric moment than a come-to-Jesus moment, but he credited divine intervention with winning over Mr. Espaillat, the first Dominican-American to serve in Congress.“Today, all of that praying, all of those candles that I’ve burned, all of those incense that I put in place, all of those Hail Marys that I called up,” Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, thundered earlier this month. “Finally, Jesus Christ looked down on me and brought me Congressman Espaillat!”Less than one month before the Democratic primary that will almost certainly determine the city’s next mayor, the battle for Latino voters and endorsers is accelerating, and the fight for that diverse constituency is emerging as one of the most crucial and uncertain elements of the race to lead New York.All the leading Democratic mayoral candidates sense opportunity. In the race’s final weeks, they are pressing their cases through advertising, Spanish-language phone banks and Latino affinity groups, deployment of surrogates and rallies in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods across the city.Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, went up with Spanish-language advertising last week. Others, including Mr. Adams and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller who lost Mr. Espaillat’s initial endorsement, had already released ads in Spanish.The next major Democratic debate, set for Wednesday night, is being co-hosted by Univision 41 Nueva York and the Hispanic Federation, among other sponsors, and may further focus the candidates’ attention on those voters.“When we look back at the winner of this primary, what put them over the top, even with ranked-choice voting, is their ability to connect late with Hispanic voters,” said Bruce Gyory, a veteran Democratic strategist who has closely studied the New York City electorate. “That’s what June is going to be about: Who finds a message that resonates, and who backs it up with resources?”In 2013, the last mayoral primary in New York City without an incumbent in the race, Hispanic voters made up 18 percent of the electorate, according to exit polls, and supported the eventual winner, Mayor Bill de Blasio, making up a vital part of his coalition. Those voters are expected to make up around 20 percent of the electorate again this year, Democratic consultants say, and strategists and lawmakers describe them as motivated by issues including economic opportunity; affordability and support for small businesses; education; public safety; and public health.“We know that Latinos, more than many other groups, were directly impacted in a very negative way” by the pandemic, said Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a New York Democrat who was the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and is supporting Maya D. Wiley in the mayoral race. “So people want to know, what are you going to do to address those inequities that were exposed during Covid-19?”The so-called Latino vote in New York is diverse generationally and geographically, culturally and ideologically. Indeed the political spectrum runs the gamut from young, left-wing Latino New Yorkers typified by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and up-and-coming lawmakers from parts of Queens, to culturally conservative voters across the city who voted for former President Donald J. Trump in surprising numbers last fall.New York City’s immigrant neighborhoods strongly favored President Biden — but virtually every predominantly Latino precinct shifted significantly to the right compared with the 2016 election results, including heavily Dominican neighborhoods in Manhattan and the Bronx, and in Corona, Queens, where there is a large Latino population.But without a front-running Hispanic candidate in the race, the political demographic is considered to be mostly up for grabs.“You have so many candidates running for mayor, and only one is really a Latina,” said the longtime political strategist, Luis A. Miranda Jr. He was referencing Dianne Morales, a left-wing candidate who identifies as Afro-Latina. (Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, is white, though her ex-husband is of Puerto Rican descent and she has referenced the fact that her children are half Puerto Rican.)“You really need validators from our community that are telling you, ‘So-and-so is good for the Latino community, so-and-so is good for the neighborhood you live in,’” Mr. Miranda said. (Neither Mr. Miranda nor his son, the actor and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, has endorsed a candidate in the race.)Mr. Adams may have the most significant institutional support in the field, reflecting his background as a veteran city politician with extensive relationships. He promises to be a “blue-collar” mayor who connects in working-class communities and prioritizes public safety.Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, stars in ads for Mr. Adams and is supporting him, as is Fernando Ferrer, the 2005 Democratic mayoral nominee who built a formidable coalition of Black and Latino voters in his unsuccessful bid.“I saw him in the South Bronx on a street corner where I used to shine shoes,” Mr. Ferrer said of Mr. Adams. “He’s comfortable. And you have to be comfortable with people.”Still, Mr. Adams has not always smoothly navigated his outreach over the years. In 1993, for instance, his remarks criticizing the Puerto Rican-born comptroller candidate, Herman Badillo, for not marrying a Hispanic woman became such a point of controversy that Mr. Badillo highlighted the issue in an advertising campaign.Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate who pledges to be an anti-poverty mayor, has also made a major push for Latino voters.He has been endorsed by a number of prominent younger Latino leaders, from City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, a left-wing Mexican-American who dropped out of the mayoral contest, to Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who identifies as Afro-Latino. Mr. Yang spent Thursday in the Bronx, home to the city’s largest Latino population, laying out his public safety vision.“We know the Latino base is the one everyone is going after,” said Assemblyman Kenny Burgos, a 26-year-old Hispanic Yang supporter who represents the Bronx. “The youth vote, so to speak, is going to be something heavily in effect here.”Then there is Ms. Garcia, who has risen in some recent polls. Last Saturday afternoon, she was at a lively outdoor food market in the Bronx, greeting voters and discussing the biggest issues she hears from Hispanic New Yorkers.“Where’s the economy, do they feel safe, and are you educating the kids? Those are at the top of mind, and housing affordability, you hear it over and over again,” Ms. Garcia said. “They care about boots on the ground. They care about you showing up.”In a ranked-choice election in which voters may back up to five candidates in order of preference, Ms. Garcia’s surname may help her stand out, Mr. Miranda said..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“The city in which we live, it’s pretty tribal,” he said. “They’ll gravitate to a Spanish name because they’ll believe that person will be Latino.”There is limited public polling available on the mayor’s race overall, much less on Hispanic voters specifically. But a new survey out Wednesday from Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analytics found Mr. Yang virtually tied with Mr. Adams among Hispanic voters, when including voters who leaned in their directions, with roughly a quarter of those voters undecided. Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive, came in third place among Hispanic voters in that poll.Ms. Morales is unlikely to connect with older Latino voters who are leery of calls to defund the police, but she had recently shown promise as a standard-bearer for young, deeply progressive voters from a range of ethnic backgrounds.Dianne Morales, a left-wing candidate who identifies as Afro-Latina, may alienate some older Latino voters because of her calls to defund the police.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times“We might see maybe a little bit of a wild card in this election because young people are so energized by her campaign,” Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas of Queens said in an interview last week. “She’s been very intentional about bringing young people into the conversation.”Later in the week, internal turmoil from the Morales campaign spilled into public view, and it is not yet clear how a late-stage campaign shake-up nearly three weeks before the primary will affect that standing.Ms. González-Rojas, however, said on Wednesday that she stood by her remarks. She has also said that she had pitched Ms. Morales’s candidacy to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s team.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is among the most powerful potential endorsers still remaining on the sidelines of the mayoral race. Ms. Velázquez, who has recorded radio ads on behalf of Ms. Wiley, has spoken with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez directly about the contest, encouraging her to meet with Ms. Wiley, she said.Other candidates are also ramping up their Latino engagement. Ms. Wiley released an agenda aimed at Latino communities last week. In his new ad, Mr. Donovan narrates in Spanish, and he visited a major Latino church in Queens this weekend. Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, has Spanish-language radio ads and the support of, among others, Assemblyman Robert J. Rodriguez of East Harlem. Mr. Stringer, for his part, has long seen opportunities to cement his standing with Latino voters in the final weeks of the race. He lost Mr. Espaillat’s backing, among others, following an accusation that he made unwanted sexual advances during a 2001 campaign, which he has denied.But even lawmakers who retracted their endorsements say that Mr. Stringer remains well known in some of their neighborhoods.He is planning a rally aimed at Latino voters in Washington Heights, where he grew up, on June 12. His stepfather, Carlos Cuevas, is Puerto Rican and narrates a Spanish-language ad for Mr. Stringer, and Mr. Stringer’s extended Puerto Rican family is expected to join him at the rally, his campaign said.Many Latino voters are just starting to take notice of the race, said Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz of Queens, who pulled her endorsement from Mr. Stringer and has not backed anyone else. “They don’t really start talking about the election until like a month out,” she said. “You will see them start paying a lot more attention in the couple weeks leading up to the election itself, unless there’s somebody that completely electrifies them.” More