Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $15 million effort Wednesday to educate New Yorkers about ranked-choice voting, which allows residents to list up to five candidates in order of preference for several races.

The effort comes less than two months before the city’s primary elections, on June 21, which will effectively decide the outcome of most citywide and City Council races. 

A recent NY1 poll found that just 53% of likely Democratic voters said they were “familiar with the system, even though 83% said they had heard of it. Only 20% said they were “very familiar.” 

The education effort will include outreach on TV and radio, as well as in print and digital media, with a focus on ethnic and community news outlets, de Blasio said at a press conference.

The city had not begun the effort sooner, de Blasio added, because his administration was focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and the city’s economic recovery. 

“I am absolutely convinced the timing works,” de Blasio said. “Concentrating such a massive outreach effort in this space and time is the thing that will get people's attention. We’re gonna spend the money when it will actually be felt.” 

Laura Wood, the newly named chief democracy officer for the city, will oversee the operation, which she said will include materials in up to 18 languages and direct outreach to faith groups and women- and minority-owned businesses. 

The ranked-choice voting system allows voters to list up to five preferred candidates, in order of preference, for five races: Mayor, City Council, City Comptroller, Public Advocate and Borough President. 

The system tabulates votes through multiple rounds, redistributing voters’ second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-choice votes until one candidate reaches a share of the total vote that is greater than 50%. 

In the first round, the candidate with the lowest share of the vote is eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate first will then have their second-choice picks added to the vote shares of the remaining candidates. If no candidate has reached 50% of the vote share, then the process goes through another round.

The city has already conducted a few elections this year using ranked-choice voting. The city’s first winner of a ranked-choice vote was Selvena Brooks-Powers, the new council member for City Council district 31, in southeast Queens. The vote went through nine rounds.