What to expect during the ranked choice voting count in New York City Council races

New York City elections officials began releasing preliminary results Wednesday from ranked choice voting in last week’s City Council primaries — but those results may change in the coming days and weeks as additional ballots are tallied.

Voting in the local primaries concluded June 27, but winners have yet to be determined in some City Council contests. That includes several that could advance to ranked choice voting and be subject to subsequent rounds of ballot-counting, where voters’ second through fifth choices are taken into account if no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes.

The city is still in the process of tabulating first round results. Unlike in some other places that use ranked choice voting, such as the states of Maine and Alaska, the preliminary tabulation of ranked choice results in New York is released before that initial count is complete. The Board of Elections will continue to release updated preliminary results on a weekly basis until all outstanding ballots have been counted and the elections are certified.

Here’s what voters and election observers will need to know in the coming weeks:

WHAT’S AT STAKE

One primary, the Democratic contest in District 19 in northeast Queens, will definitely be decided by ranked choice voting since all three candidates are well below the 50% threshold. In three additional major party races, the leading candidates hover near the 50% mark as ballots continue to be tabulated.

In one of these races, the District 9 Democratic primary in Harlem, the Associated Press declared Wednesday that criminal justice reform activist Yusef Salaam has won his contest after preliminary results indicated that he will be the clear winner even if it does proceed to ranked choice voting.

Three additional City Council primaries remain unresolved as…