It's a diacritic marker that indicates how the word is supposed to be pronounced, with a syllable break on the marked letters - as though readers might get conf

It's a diacritic marker that indicates how the word is supposed to be pronounced, with a syllable break on the marked letters - as though readers might get confused and think the word is pronounced "reel-ection" as opposed to "re-election." It's a pretty archaic practice, but The New Yorker persists. They have a lot of unusual stylistic preferences, like preferring the spelling "vender" over "vendor," which also occurs in this article. A more common example of the diaeresis would be the name "Zoë" - the "ë" indicates the pronunciation is "zoe-y" (2 syllables) not "zoe" (1 syllable). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)#English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)#English