Voting in New York

Not many voters, even ADA voters (who are unusually savvy about politics), properly understand the vagaries of the New York Presidential delegate election system. Here is an explanation of how the delegate system works.

Voting for candidates and for delegates is separate. The delegates are chosen on the basis of how many votes the candidate gets, not on how many the delegate gets. The delegates are chosen for each district by the percentage of votes attained by each candidate, and each delegate is chosen, by sex, to represent their candidate.

Example:

Say these people are running for delegate slots in your district.

In this situation, two men and two women are each competing to see who can be the delegate for their candidate. Assume that the following votes are tallied:

Assuming in this case that the vote is 50% for Gore and 50% for Bradley, and that there are four delegates to be assigned for this district, the following will end up being delegates:

Adam Adams (the highest vote tally of any male Gore supporter), Barbara Brown (the highest vote total of any female Gore supporter), Edward Edwards (the highest vote total of any male Bradley supporter), and Harriet Horse (the highest vote total of any female Bradley supporter). If the vote was 75% for Gore, then three Gore delegates would be chosen, and only one Bradley delegate, regardless of the amount of votes obtained by the Bradley delegates themselves.

In essence, each candidate for delegate is running only against the same-sex candidates for delegate for the same candidate. In our example, Adam Adams and Carl Charles are competing with each other to decide who will be the male delegate for Gore in the district. So regardless of whom you vote for for president, you should choose the male and female candidates for delegate you like under each candidate, rather than voting the whole slate of delegates for one candidate. But it is essential that you first vote for your choice for President.