Could the solution to New York’s notoriously low voter turnout – and even the nation’s hyper-partisan divide – be to change how we all vote?

A new documentary playing at Angelika Film Center’s East Village location makes that case. “Majority Rules,” which is on through Thursday, covers ranked-choice voting in the United States. The electoral system lets voters rank their candidates in order of preference.

The film traces the wild path of Alaska’s 2022 House race, which featured a ballot with 48 candidates and a failed comeback attempt by Sarah Palin, the state’s former governor and Republican vice presidential candidate.

New York City voters are probably already familiar with ranked-choice voting. The city adopted a version of the system through a 2019 ballot measure, but it is only used for primaries and special elections for municipal elected offices — at least for now. At the state level, a proposed bill would expand the use of ranked-choice voting for all state and local offices.

Tim Dunn, the executive director of Unite New York, an electoral reform advocacy organization pushing to expand ranked choice voting, and the film’s director AJ Schack joined WNYC’s Brigid Bergin on “The Brian Lehrer Show.” An edited version of their conversation is below.

Brigid Bergin: AJ, your documentary focuses on the congressional elections that took place in Alaska back in 2022. How did that version of ranked choice voting come to exist? And how did it exactly work?

AJ Schnack: Well, Alaska did something that no state had done before in the history of the country. They voted to put in a system where basically a couple of things would happen in the primary.

Every single voter, including independents, would get the same ballot and it listed every single person who’s going to run for each office. In the House race, Alaska only has one House member and they had a special election and 48 people ran for that position. So when they went for the special primary, they got to choose between 48 people and then the top four finishers moved on to a general election and it was in that general election where then they would have the opportunity to rank candidates in order of preference.

And that was the race that people might be somewhat familiar with where Sarah Palin decided that she was going to try to run for Alaska’s House seat. But they voted to do it in 2020 and then 2022, which is when we were filming, that was the first time Alaska did it and the first time anyone in America did it.

Most states, New York included, use closed party primaries where only voters who are registered with a party that is holding the primary are able to vote. This film suggests that this system exacerbates that kind of hyper-partisanship and extremism that has really come to color a lot of our federal politics. Can you explain a little bit more why primaries are so important, and how you see them playing out in New York?

Tim Dunn: The closed primary process really has a chilling effect on outcomes and it really leads to greater polarization. We just had party primaries just last week in New York and there were 44 primaries held across the state. The average turnout was only 15%.

That’s abysmally low. And … that allows the candidates in those elections to really just cater to the most extreme elements of the party that are voting in these elections. A lot of these elections are decided by the primary. We have districts where the enrollment advantage is so steep that the primary election decides the race.

For example, in New York State Assembly District 41, Helene Weinstein is not running for re-election. The Democratic primary in that district is going to decide the outcome because there are four times the [number of] Democrats than Republicans in that district. A mere 9% of eligible voters participated in that primary — 3,811 people decided who’s going to be the Assembly representative in that district.

That is not democratic. That is not representative. And it’s not good for our country or for our state.

Schnack: What we see anywhere where people try to bring in voting reforms, if someone is already in power — whether it’s an individual elected official or it’s a party that feels like they understand the rules — then saying like, “well, we should change the rules,” they say, “well, this is going to hurt me. So I’m against it.”

But I think, we can look at a lot of these races, particularly when there’s more than say, two or three candidates and where you have the chance that someone’s going to end up winning with 30-some percent, is that really who the majority would like to be in that seat? I think that that’s one of the benefits of ranked-choice voting. You’re guaranteed that you’re going to get that majority victor, and you’re not going to have to go through a costly runoff election in order to get there.

Tim, what’s your sense of where the state legislation stands now?

Dunn: I agree that ranked-choice voting in New York state would improve outcomes and we would be in a situation where we would definitely have a majority winner at the conclusion of an election through the instant runoff process.

I think the good thing is, despite the fact that we only have it at the city level, not the state level, there actually is legislation right now in the state Assembly that would alleviate this and would implement statewide ranked-choice voting. Awesome legislation. Assembly Bill 479 sponsored by Brooklyn’s own Bobby Carroll.

That would implement ranked-choice voting on a statewide basis in any state or local race, where more than two candidates have filed to run for the seat. And the cool part about that is it’s not just ranked choice, that legislation would also enable an open primary so that in one of these cases, we have more than two candidates filed — maybe a Republican, a Democrat and an independent, or maybe three Democrats and a Republican — you would have a single primary where all candidates were competing. All voters could vote, and then using ranked-choice voting, you’d narrow that down to two candidates to advance the general election. Maybe a Republican and a Democrat, maybe two Democrats, two Republicans, you know, two independents, who knows?

But ultimately, you’re getting closer to having candidates representative of the opinions and feelings of the majority of voters, not this tiny percentage of party stalwarts who participate in our primaries.

Just to clarify, Tim, would that proposed legislation apply to all state elections or state and federal?

Dunn: As currently structured, that would apply to all state and local elections. So it would obviously go a little different from what was done in New York City, where it’s focused specifically on the party primaries, but it really would expand that concept.

And it’s based off of success in both Alaska and California. And I would say that, you know, New York and Brooklyn is lucky to have someone like Bobby Carroll that’s seen around the corner and [is] looking for solutions here.

What would be your advice to someone who might have questions about the strategy in ranked-choice voting?

Dunn: One really important topic is voter education. I think folks can check our website UniteNY.

Here’s what we found in 2021 with the implementation in New York City. One of the things we talk about is we think ranked-choice voting is going to drive up turnout. And actually in 2021, we saw an increase of 65,000 more voters participating in that Democratic primary than [we] did eight years earlier. So I think there’s a lot of great empirical evidence there, but we can’t just sit back and hope folks are going to figure it out.

Most voters found that it was easy to use and it was logical but we’re going to continue to beat the drum. Common Cause New York has done great work on this.

Can you clarify the difference between the ranked-choice voting that we saw in the film versus what we do here in New York City, AJ?

Schnack: In Alaska, the ranked-choice piece was used in the general election in November. Whereas here in New York City, it is used in the primary to narrow down and get the nominee. In 2021, the Democratic nominee was Eric Adams and then you knew he was the candidate all the way through to the November election.

In the Alaska style, everybody gets to vote in the primary. And then that narrowing down process of getting to a top four happens. So between the primary and the general election, you can really look at those four candidates or those five candidates and make the choice of who fits my values the most? And they’re my number one and who else do I want to rank of the candidates that are in the race?