Should Massachusetts switch to statewide ranked choice voting? – The Boston Globe

In 2018, when I entered a multiperson primary, several people asked: “Why are you running when there’s already a woman in the race?” That question has been posed countless times to nontraditional candidates for office. It is also a prime example of identity-based vote-splitting concerns; avoiding this is one of many reasons why Massachusetts should adopt statewide ranked choice voting, or RCV.

RCV empowers voters, enhances candidate ballot access, and improves democracy by allowing voters to rank their favored candidates in a particular race. The first candidate to break 50 percent plus one vote wins. If no candidate earns that majority in the first round of counting, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their votes redistributed to voters’ second choices. This digital process repeats until a candidate breaks the simple majority threshold.

RCV’s redistribution process alleviates vote-splitting concerns based on candidates’ identities, political ideologies, or other reasons because it avoids voting power dilution. Currently, nontraditional candidates are dissuaded from running against each other out of fear that each will reduce anyone’s chances of winning. RCV, however, encourages diverse candidates to run and generates more reflective representation in elected office. Thus, RCV also empowers voters to vote for their favored candidate(s) because so-called throw-away votes no longer exist.

Additionally, RCV makes campaigning more respectful and less rancorous. In New York City’s first RCV municipal election, “ranked choice [had] an unusual effect on some New Yorkers: They were civil,” the New York Times reported.

RCV is simple for voters to use. Voters in more than half the states in the nation already use it in races ranging from local government to presidential elections, including several Massachusetts communities.

Finally, RCV ensures that candidates win elections by a true majority. Under our existing system, a stark number of candidates win multiperson primaries with less than half the vote.

RCV yields many benefits, including ensuring election by majority vote, reducing systemic barriers to entry, avoiding vote-splitting concerns, generating more diversity both on the ballot and in elected office, and more positive campaigning. We already have the technological capabilities to make the switch. Massachusetts should adopt statewide RCV.

NO

Paul Diego Craney

Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance

While proponents of Ranked Choice Voting claim it will “improve” our elections and deliver more “fair” results, the reality of the system in practice could not be further from the truth.

In California, where RCV already existed, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed an RCV proposal, noting it “has often led to voter confusion and the promise that ranked choice voting leads to greater democracy is not necessarily fulfilled.”

RCV proponents claim it selects a candidate with the most support from the voters. In actuality, it only determines a winner by eliminating votes from those who do not select the two candidates last standing.

Unless a voter can correctly guess which two candidates will survive the last round of RCV, that voter’s vote is discarded. If this sounds confusing, it’s because it is.

RCV proponents also falsely claim it results in less negative campaigning, but negative campaigning has remained prominent in all places where the RCV is in use, merely shifting to Super PACs and outside organizations. Candidates should freely debate the issues and be unafraid of contrasting with other candidates. With RCV, negative campaigning will continue in a more convoluted way, candidates will feel even less encouraged to provide a contrast, and voters will get even less information than they do now.

RCV ballots force voters to guess the candidates who will remain standing in multiple voting rounds and cast their votes in the dark. If they guess wrong and vote for eliminated candidates, their ballots are discarded and not counted in the final vote. Winners get a false majority of remaining ballots, not a true majority of all the voters voting in the election.

In 2020, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly opposed a ballot question to allow for RCV. Despite support from the state’s top Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, voters in nearly 80 percent of the state’s cities and towns rejected the ballot question. The proponents spent nearly $10 million while the opponents spent less than $10,000.

If RCV proponents can’t get voters behind their idea with a 1,000 to 1 spending disparity, perhaps it’s time for them to consider the problem may lay with the idea itself.

Linda Greenstein can be reached at greensteinlm@gmail.com.