Massachusetts voters are evenly split on a ballot question that would fundamentally change how they select candidates for state and federal office, according to a WBUR poll conducted by the MassINC Polling Group.
But David Cavell said yesterday that decision to drop out of the race for Congress yesterday (and endorse Jesse Mermell) wouldn’t have been necessary if ranked choice voting was already in play, notes an article in CommonWealth Magazine.
Cavell said his decision to quit what had been a nine-way scramble for the Democratic nomination was motivated by a wish not to see one of the leading candidates, Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss, prevail as a result of other candidates with similar views splitting the support of like-minded voters.
“There are many strong candidates to represent the people of the Fourth District,” Cavell said in a statement. “Unfortunately, there is one candidate in this race who I believe has proven himself unfit to represent this District. In a crowded field without ranked-choice voting, I refuse to make it more likely that the people of our District, particularly Black and brown people, will be represented by someone we cannot trust.”
I wish that when there were this huge a field in a primary, we could have a run-off between the top 2 if no one received at least 50% of the vote. Even with ranked voting, 8 is too many to properly research and decide between.
Are there any substantive arguments against ranked choice? I don’t find the “confusing ballot” argument convincing at all, but I’m sure there are other reasons why people oppose it.
Ranked ordered elections give power to insiders who coordinate voters through, for example, email lists. In Newton a lot of voters are guided by these lists. This looks like what happened with the election of the charter commission– those elected corresponded perfectly to the lists distributed by elected officials.
Ranked ordered elections exacerbate this. Someone who does not study all the candidates but has a strong preference for one is relatively disadvantaged compared an email list voter.
@Jeffrey Pontiff. Points well taken, but I point to Ireland’s unique form of rank choice voting which they term “proportional representation” to present the other side of the coin. The Economist Magazine’s Intelligence Section’s 2019 report ranked Ireland as the world’s 6th most vibrant democracy (tied with Canada) while this country slipped to 26th place and is set to go even lower in the 2020 report.
Irish voters have demonstrated that they are very adept at sifting through 15 or more candidates for multi candidate districts to make either a partisan or very personal set of decisions. It’s great civic engagement as well as a real blood sport and the Irish enjoy both. Now some would argue that the Irish are more engaged and politically sophisticated than we are over here and there’s truth to this, particularly in the last 15 years when the winds of change have upended social, political, religious and economic institutions that had dominated the island for centuries. In their most recent parliamentary elections, the Green Party was able to cobble together 13 seats and joined a coalition with the two major political parties after obtaining a number of concessions pertaining to transportation, housing and climate change. With single member districts, they may have won only 2 or 3 seats and no chance to advance their agenda which a growing number of Irish citizens now support. I have dual citizenship over there and all the Irish I know just shake their heads sadly at what is transpiring here.
I wonder how RCV would shape national politics if it gets widely adopted. Presumably it would give 3rd party candidates a better chance in senate races, for example.
It might give 3rd party candidates a better shot because voters opting for such candidates wouldn’t have to worry as much that their decision could actually elect the person they favored least. The more likely outcome in the short run is that the 3rd party candidate’s supporters would wind up with a better alternative as senator.
I think in general “ranked choice voting” is a step in the right direction and it is certainly better than what we’ll have to deal with on September 1 this year.
(If we do implement RCV someday, I won’t be surprised if it leads to arguments from losing candidates about how we used the wrong RCV method. Also, it’s worth pointing out that you can accomplish something very similar to RCV without the need for ‘confusing ballots’ and without the pressure/stress of constructing an intricate ranking. Rather than “instant runoff”, we could hold actual runoffs, as well as preliminaries, to narrow a large field of candidates gradually.)
The confusion could be reduced by having just two ranked options. That would still allow a “safe” choice and a “preferred” choice in a 3-way race.
@Jeffrey — The problem with the charter commissioner election wasn’t ranked choice voting, but rather its 100% at-large, non-head-to-head framework. That favors circulated list slate candidates and doesn’t clarify their stances. It can lead to 51% of the sentiment translating to 100% of the representation. Cambridge has city council election system where representation ends up more proportional to sentiment.
IJake has been a very passionate supporter of ranked choice voting, including a large $10K donation to the cause as I recall. From his website:
“Fix the system at its root
Jake believes systemic change is the most durable and impactful. In Congress, Jake will look beyond the surface to address root causes of the issues we face in our systems and institutions. As a starter, that means overturning Citizens United. Jake also supports the Fair Representation Act and was an early supporter of Ranked Choice Voting, a simple and fair way to better represent the will of the majority in election.” https://www.jakeforma.com/priorities
While my candidate did not donate $10K to the Ranked Choice Voting movement, she definitely supports Ranked Choice Voting and other voting reforms as do I.
“”Jesse supports a transition to Ranked Choice Voting and supports many other electoral forms to ensure that every person can participate in our democracy. She believes we need to enact universal, automatic mail-in voting with prepaid return postage and appropriate accommodations for those with disabilities, remove witness and ID requirements, expand no-excuse absentee voting, early voting, same-day registration, and online registration, and dismantle decades of voter suppression efforts.”