Albany could be headed toward a major overhaul of how it picks its mayor and Common Council members. Ranked Choice Voting Albany turned in a petition with 1,975 signatures to the city clerk's office on Oct. 29, and now officials must determine whether at least 1,200 of them are valid before the proposal can move forward.
If the clerk validates enough signatures, Albany voters could decide the fate of ranked-choice voting as soon as the 2027 general election, according to WAMC. The referendum would ask residents whether to eliminate party primaries altogether and instead elect city officials, including the mayor and Common Council members, through a single November election decided by ranked-choice voting.
It's worth noting a discrepancy in the public record here. Earlier State of Politics reporting from July described Ranked Choice Voting Albany as having delivered 3,200 signatures to the clerk's office at that time, a figure that doesn't line up neatly with the 1,975 signatures described in this latest round. Neither the clerk's office nor the organizers have offered an explanation reconciling the two numbers, and it remains unclear how they relate.
Why Organizers Say the System Would Be Fairer
Ranked Choice Voting Albany co-chair Charlotte Collet said hundreds of registered voters she has spoken with like the proposal, citing its fairness, inclusiveness, lower cost and simplicity. Collet said the system would give every registered Albany voter a meaningful voice, regardless of party affiliation.
The group believes this marks the first citizen ballot initiative in the city to bypass the Common Council with a second round of signature gathering, after the council previously did not act on the organization's original petition, which contained 2,624 valid signatures. Richard Conti, a former Common Council member and ranked-choice voting advocate, said the renewed petition drive reflects civic engagement and a desire among Albany residents to reform government and include unaffiliated voters.
Party Opposition and a Rival Council Proposal
Not everyone is on board. The Democratic Party and Working Families Party in Albany County oppose eliminating party primaries entirely, arguing the change would disempower primary voters and confuse people at the general-election ballot box, per WAMC's earlier reporting on the proposal.
Andy Kaier, chair of the Capital District Working Families Party, said party nominations signal important information to voters and that he would rather see the city prioritize reforms to Albany's campaign finance structure. Still, Kaier noted that Working Families Party members do support a simpler ranked-choice system — just not one that does away with primaries. Under the activists' plan, candidates would appear on the ballot listed with their party registration along with the names of any other parties that endorse them.
That disagreement has already produced a rival proposal inside City Hall. Common Council Member Jack Flynn introduced a separate measure that would implement ranked-choice voting in both primary and general elections for city-level races, rather than scrapping primaries altogether. Flynn said he introduced the legislation to bring different perspectives into the conversation about electoral reform, and the proposal remains before the council's Law, Buildings and Code Enforcement Committee.
What the Charter Change Would Actually Do
Minutes from that committee show Common Council counsel Wenner noted that the activists' petition functions, in practice, as a removal of the primary system, according to records from the City of Albany. An archived city agenda also shows the proposal would amend Article II of the Albany city charter by adding a new Section 207 titled Ranked Choice Voting, which references the simultaneous elimination of candidates whose election has become mathematically impossible.
Under a typical ranked-choice system, voters rank up to five candidates from most to least preferred. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots are redistributed to voters' next-ranked choices. That process repeats until one candidate wins at least 50 percent of the votes cast.
How Albany Would Fit Into a Broader Shift
Separately, any ballot measure would need clearance from the New York State Attorney General's Office under the New York Voting Rights Act before it could move forward. If Albany voters ultimately approve a referendum, the city would become the third municipality in New York to adopt ranked-choice voting, joining New York City, which has used the system in primaries and special elections since the 2021 cycle, and the Town of Newburgh, which adopted its own version earlier in 2026.
Newburgh's shift came out of a legal settlement with residents who had sued over the town's at-large system for choosing Town Board members, the Times Union reported, making it the second municipality statewide to make the switch. Cities like San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis already use their own forms of ranked-choice voting, and statewide polling suggests the idea has traction beyond Albany — a June Unite NY poll found that half of Buffalo voters surveyed supported ranked-choice voting, according to State of Politics.
Nationally, the push shows no signs of slowing. As of September, three states used ranked-choice voting statewide or in some federal and statewide elections, while localities in 13 other states had adopted or were preparing to adopt it for municipal races, per Ballotpedia News. Voters in Irvine, California, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Longmont, Colorado, were all set to decide their own ranked-choice ballot measures on Nov. 3. The cumulative count of local ranked-choice voting measures put before voters nationwide was 72, 57 of which had passed.
