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Manny Silva Cross Endorses Fellow Candidates Ahead of D31 Special Election



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In a new step for New York City elections, City Council District 31 candidate Manny Silva cross-endorsed three of his opponents to rank alongside him on the ballot in one of the city’s first votes with Ranked Choice Voting. 

In a Zoom press conference Friday morning -which was moved virtually due to the frigid temperatures – Silva, the former Chief of Staff to now Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, ranked himself first, Reverend Sherwyn James second, business owner Nancy Martinez third, and LaToya Benjamin fourth, and urged his supporters to do the same. 

“Today is not about me or any one candidate,” Silva said, adding this is the first cross-endorsement in a city council special election. “It’s about putting our values ahead of our own personal interest.” 

Silva, a Rockaway resident, said that the candidates he is endorsing should be ranked alongside him in this February’s special election to fill the seat left vacant by Donovan Richards. Ranked Choice Voting, which goes to effect this year, allows voters to rank candidates in a desired order. Proponents of the policy say the system will make elections more democratic. 

“Ranked Choice Voting is going to give us an opportunity to make things fair,” Silva said.  

Ranked Choice Voting, for those unaware, is a method in which voters select their preferred candidates in order, from most favored to least. As Richard Brann, a visiting lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School who previously served as an assistant attorney general and state solicitor for the state of Maine – the very first state to implement Ranked Choice Voting – explains in a piece written by Harvard Law Today, “in races in which there are more than two candidates, if no candidate gets over 50% of the first-choice ballots, the lowest-ranked candidate is dropped, and the second choices of his or her voters are counted and added to the higher-ranked candidates. This process continues until a candidate gets over 50% and is declared the winner.”

“Proponents like it because a candidate with a strong core of supporters who is disliked by a majority of the voters should not be able to win under RCV but can win under the plurality system,” Brann added. “Proponents also like it because it avoids the cost and voter participation drop-off of the second most popular voting system, namely, a separate run-off election. The winner under RCV should instead be the person who a majority of the voters prefer. It eliminates the role of ‘spoilers’—you can vote for your preferred candidate first, and then rank one of the “lesser of two evils” second, and know that you aren’t ‘throwing away your vote’ on a candidate who cannot win.”

Embracing the new system, Silva endorsed opponents that he says share the same values as his campaign, and who he’s seen doing work in the community already, and would like to work with after the election. 

“We are going up against the same machine, the same monster,” he said. “I am trying to build something that goes beyond the election.”

Reverend Sherwyn James, who Silva ranked right behind himself, said he was “pleased to receive the endorsement,” and is hoping to continue spreading the values Silva spoke about. “There are so many things that we need to address in our community,” he said. 

Nancy Martinez, a small business owner in Far Rockaway and community organizer, also thanked Silva for the endorsement, and spoke about what she sees as unfairness in the election. 

“I see candidates in this race that I’ve ever seen before,” she said, declining to name names. Martinez also said people would soon see what her ballot will look like, and that Manny Silva will be on it. 

Silva also endorsed LaToya Benjamin, who Silva said couldn’t make it to the virtually streamed event. “I want to see democracy, I’m not afraid of 11 candidates on the ballot,” Silva said. 

The special election for District 31 will take place on Feb. 23. 

 

 

 

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