Efforts are underway across the state to inform voters about the benefits of ranked choice voting, which would allow voters to rank candidates in the order they prefer them. Voter Choice Massachusetts is advocating for using ranked choice voting in all Massachusetts elections — from school committees to U.S. Senate.
You can learn more at a presentation so-sponsored by the Newton League of Women Voters and the Newton Free Library on Wednesday, March 6 at 7 p.m. at the library.
I understand the benefits of ranked choice voting for state and federal offices but I’ve never thought about it much at the local level. I’m all for anything to encourages more people to vote. Would ranked choice voting change voter engagement in Newton?
Ranked choice only matters when there are more than two candidates for a position, which is fairly rare for the non-mayoral races. We have a primary model which ensues that there will be only two candidates in the end; ranked choice would allow us to eliminate the primary and still prevent vote-splitting problems. Since turn out in the primaries is quite low, it would increase turnout somewhat, but wouldn’t make that much of a practical difference.
If we had true at-large model for City council seats, with lots of candidates running several seats, then ranked choice would make a big difference — that’s what Cambridge does.
I ‘d suspect Fuller would have lost with ranked choice voting.
YES! The winner-take-all voting system that is common in the US is the WORST out of all voting systems, and bringing it in at the local level will help people become more comfortable with this, and then hopefully we can start bringing it in at the state and federal levels.
E.g. third-party candidates like Perot and Nader would not have affected the presidential elections like they did and would have completely altered who was elected president (for good or bad, I cannot say).
Paul: In the recent mayoral run-off, Fuller (5240 votes) and Lennon (4692 votes) each got more votes than all of the other candidates put together (4357 votes — no one other than Amy Sangiolo got more than 610 votes). This suggests that Ranked Choice (instant runoff) voting wouldn’t have changed the results.
That’s not quite true, because more people voted in the general election than in the runoff, and people changed their minds between the runoff and the general. But, in general, with only three serious candidates, our system should lead to basically the same result as ranked choice, although it requires a second election.
The two systems (ranked choice and runoff followed by general) can lead to different results with 4 (or more) candidates with significant support, if the supporters of the 4th most popular candidate mostly support the 3rd most popular, but we haven’t had an election like that in the 18 years I’ve lived in Newton.
I strongly support ranked choice voting — it matters in partisan elections, by allowing third party / independent candidates to run without being spoilers. Carefully implemented ranked choice voting also have significant impact on multi-seat elections, where it can prevent a modest majority from winning all of the seats. (A party that is supported by 60% of the electorate ought to win a majority of seats, but not all of them.) I just don’t think it would change our local results.
@Paul, Fuller may well have won. We just don’t know as we didn’t have ranked choice during the voting.
@Jessica, I agree with you that with the local elections the way they are, they aren’t going to change that much with ranked choice – and that’s OK. With ranked choice, however, it better captures the “will of the voters” than the winner-take-all system we currently have in cases where we have more than two candidates running.
My concern with a change to ranked choice is
(1) cost to change to ranked choice (new machines? I don’t know enough about our optical scan voting machines to say)
(2) voter confusion. “Rank your candidates from #1 to #5” is not that difficult to understand – people inherently get this idea, but I’m sure some still need some education.
It is the results of the election and people getting upset about it that I am more concerned about. If “their” candidate doesn’t win, they’ll be more likely to say, “This ranked choice is rubbish! Get rid of it!”
YES! 100% support this.
One more thing, tangentially related to voting: with the journalism landscape collapsing in many places (sadly), it is harder than ever to determine if local candidates align with your voting preferences. It is difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating.
Paradoxically, it is easier than ever to research national candidates as larger media companies direct their resources there.
One thing I’d love to see is more information on local candidates, and I’m hoping that making this info more easily accessible we’d see more voter engagement.
I’m for anything that gives more power to the voters. There are two specific things [besides rank choice voting] that would accomplish this in Newton…
First, giving voters the printed ballot option to vote for “None of the Above,” especially in races where there is only one candidate on the ballot…
Second, a recall provision should be added to the Charter, so voters call un-elect a candidate for malfeasance. Currently there is no stipulated means by which to impeach a local elected office holder.
Ranked Choice Voting is an alternative for selecting City Council with clear advantages over current or proposed methods. It naturally takes care of the interests of both majority and minority opinions, no matter what that type of minority view they represent.
For instance, candidates with strong local support could be elected like Ward Councilors are today (except their support could span ward boundaries). Candidates with appeal on specific issues or based on race or class can get support from across Newton, providing a voice to the voiceless.
And the size of the council could be chosen fairly arbitrarily based on the workload and the number of different viewpoints we want to be able to represent through it.
It isn’t without downsides (we could learn about them from Cambridge) but it offers so much from a fairness and equity point of view.
I hope you’ll all come to the library to hear more about it and ask about the points that have been posted. I think of it as a chance to ‘vote your heart’ without thinking you’re wasting your vote. You can vote for someone who is unlikely to win but is your first choice as your #1 candidate, but then put in a more practical or more likely winner as your #2. I think we want the winner to have a majority of voter support, instead of people winning with a plurality.
I support ranked choice voting. I don’t like small pluralities deciding elections. For example:
Last year, 10 people ran for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District and Lori Trahan is now a Congresswoman with 21.7% of the vote.
In 2013 in Boston, 12 people ran for Mayor, with the preliminary election winners being John Connolly (16%) and Marty Walsh (12%).
It would take a significant rearrangement of how we elect City Councilors in Newton to make this work in Newton, but I’m betting it could be done in a way that would both ensure some kind of rough majority rule while still protecting many of the local and village attributes that are important to a lot of people here. This week’s Newton Tab has a very clear and concise summary of how PR usually works.
I have dual citizenship in Ireland and have been following their national and local elections for several years. They use a robust form or proportional representation that is incredibly popular, wildly unpredictable, inclusively representative and really fun to participate in. The two major parties don’t particularly like PR, but their attempts, through referendum, to change it have always been defeated by substantial margins. And I think it also produces shrewder and more sophisticated voters who are literally forced to become more engaged around several issues and unique party differences.
I can’t say for certain, but I’ll also bet that few if any countries or local governments have ever voted to rescind PR once this has been established.
Winner Take All is just about the worst voting system you could use, and Ranked Choice would be a massive improvement that I enthusiastically support.
Still, if we are changing voting systems, and keeping in mind there is no such thing as a mathematically “perfect” voting system, I’d be even happier if we went with Range Voting.
https://rangevoting.org/
I first voted in a Proportional Representation election 1972 in Northern Ireland in the election for our university’s students union committee. I also volunteered as a counter. It was not only a really fun experience but the count which went on by hand during the night was so energizing and engaging, as candidates were eliminated and second, then third, and even fourth choices were redistributed. The result was an elected body that governed by consensus. As Bob said, it leads to a more sophisticated and savvy electorate, and I cannot believe that we are only getting around to thinking about this almost 50 years later.
@Marie. The worst thing the Republic and Northern Island did was to automate the count and get rid of the hand count. I had a friend from my days at the Irish Institute who was running as the Green Party candidate for Parliament from a Dublin constituency in 2009 which I think was the last hand count election. It took two days and five or six counts to get to the point where there were three candidates vying for the last seat in this 5 member district. Labor, Socialist and my friend from the Green Party. In the last count, the Socialist was eliminated, but her transfer votes went overwhelmingly Green instead of Labor because Green and Socialist were outside parties while Labor was often part of the governing coalition. I happened to be in Dublin when the count was going on and it was as exciting as anything I’ve ever seen here. The Greens then made the very foolish mistake of joining in coalition with the major political party and it got tarnished when the Irish economy collapsed a few months later.
I look forward to this presentation and find it to be a very timely
topic.