As the primary election for New York City draws closer, city organizations gathered to educate residents on the ranked-choice voting system.

Emily Paez is the director of nonprofit organization the Hispanic Federation. She says educating the city's Latin American community on how to vote this year is crucial since they were hardest hit by the pandemic.

"Unfortunately, civic participation in voting is not top of line to our community because of the health pandemic and Latinos being so disproportionately affected by COVID," Paez says.  Edward Cuesta, the executive director of Dominicanos USA, says turnout was also a problem in the last special election. "It's very sad to see that the turnout in the Bronx in the recent election that we had, in the special election, only in this district that we only had 4% that turnout to vote. That we cannot allow to happen," Cuesta says.

This year, residents have a new way to vote that offers more options. The ranked-choice voting system allows residents to rank up to five candidates by order of preference. "It doesn't take away from your first choice candidate, but it means that if your first choice doesn't win, you still have a say in who does, because maybe your second choice will get the mayoral nomination," says Chief Democracy Officer Laura Wood.

The organizations say the goal for this week is to get the community to register to vote by the May 28 deadline in order to participate in the primary election on June 22.