Bronx Progressives Meeting

Tuesday evening the Bronx Progressives held a meeting which covered several items. First up was a discussion on Ranked Choice Voting, question one of the ballot proposals for the November General election. 


Currently election results are showing that with several candidates running for the same office those who win are receiving less than fifty percent of the vote. Most recently in the special election that had seventeen candidates the new Public Advocate won with only 33 percent of the vote.  Ranked Choice Voting is to ensure that winners of New York City elections receive over fifty percent of the vote. You will be able to make five choices ranked one through five. If no candidate receives fifty percent of the vote the candidate who received the lowest number of votes is eliminated and their votes would go to the second choice of the voter. This would continue for other candidates being eliminated using other choices used until one candidate would have fifty percent of the vote. 


This proposal is backed by several Millennial political organizations who are to young to remember that NYC had ranked voting in the School Board Elections that were done away with because it had many problems. Voters did not fully understand the voting process, and ranked candidates for the School Board positions. As the elimination process went on peoples votes wound up going to candidates they did not really want due to the ranking process. This would only be for NYC elections and not for state or federal elections which could confuse voters who may rank non NYC ballots, thus those ballots would become voided with more than one mark at that line. Bronx Progressives backs Ranked Choice Voting.

Michael Beltzer handing out information cards on Ranked Choice Voting.


The next part of the meeting was about the Democratic Presidential Primary. Bronx Progressives were organized for Bernie Sanders in 2016, but there were differences of opinions with some Elizabeth Warren supporters in the audience. A surprise move was that there seemed to be questions about Democratic values moving away from the original goals, and one person speaking for several minutes as to why Donald Trump should be re-elected. No action was taken at this meeting.

A group photo of Bronx Progressives.


There appears to be a rift in the Bronx Progressives as the founder of their Facebook page appears to have gone rogue putting up posts that do not represent the group said Michael Beltzer. It was decided to start a new Facebook page after attempts to talk to him have gone nowhere. There were also new Executive Board members elected after Samelys Lopez stepped down as the Executive Director of the club.

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