From Zane Razzaq at the MetroWest Daily news…
With eight Democratic hopefuls battling to succeed Rep. Joe Kennedy in Congress, less than 20% of the vote could be enough to win.
In other words, the party’s nominee for the 4th Congressional District could be someone the vast majority of voters do not support. Under the current voting system, the candidate who receives the most votes wins. It’s mathematically possible for one of them to win the Sept. 1 primary with just 16% to 20% of the vote.
“In races like this one, you could end up with someone winning who does not really reflect the entire district. They may have more money or endorsements that delivered votes. That doesn’t really mean they represent the district,” said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh.
This is the poster-child situation for Ranked Choice Voting.
Vote Yes on 2!
Yes, because that’s how it works in a crowded primary. The person with the most support wins. This is nothing new and is in no way worthy of a headlline. Maybe it would be better to have a run-off prior to the primary? We could call it a preliminary primary! :) Personally, I like seeing all the folks with the same general positions being forced to stand out in a crowded field.
Ranked Choice Voting. This is an easy problem to fix.
Agree with Bryan and Doug L.
I very much would have liked to have the state primaries earlier and have a rule that if no one gets 50% of the vote (or some lower but still sizeable proportion) have a run-off between the top two. Ranked voting could also be helpful as an alternative.
Part of the problem is that around here, the Democratic primary for the House seat is basically the final election.
I agree with what everyone has said above, especially the need for ranked choice voting. (It was implemented successfully in Maine in 2018 and would be especially helpful in races like this.) I do wonder if some of the “close losers,” especially those with big pots of money behind them and funded by parents (Jake Auchincloss), in-laws (Becky Grossman), and spouses (Ihssane Leckey) might hang on and pursue write-in campaigns? A write-in campaign could be effective once the field is cleared.
There isn’t much difference among the candidates on democratic ideals and policy. Any one of them could represent the district quite well.
It’s an even lower percentage of “voters” when you count the voters who pull a Republican ballot and vote for somebody other than those 7.
You can’t conclude this from a voting system that doesn’t allow us to express our preferences.
If we were allowed to use a highly expressive voting system like range voting, personally I would give multiple candidates high scores, and I’d give the best score to more than one candidate, equally.
https://rangevoting.org/RangeVoting.html
Why not work to abolish the Electoral College that gave us Trump.
I believe Jake will win the primary with broad support through out the District.
After hearing about the same thing happening in a 10 candidate primary in 2018, I’m a strong advocate of Ranked Choice Voting for this very reason.
For the MA 4th Congressional race, I’m pretty much torn between two candidates, and there’s a 3rd who would appear on my Ranked Choice list.
Ranked Choice Voting: Check out the 2016 Cy Young Voting:
Porcello of the Red Sox, who received Cy Young votes for the first time in his eight-year career (obviously winning his first as well), was crowned the winner despite not garnering the most first place votes from the 30-writer voting base. His 8 first place votes were six behind the 14 first place votes Justin Verlander received. It was the 18 second place votes, however, that propped Porcello over the top.