MA Supporters Vow to Keep Fighting for Ranked-Choice Voting
Suzanne Potter – Commonwealth News Service
BOSTON — Advocates of ranked-choice voting say they’re disappointed but undeterred by their loss at the polls on Tuesday, and vow to fight another day.
The idea of ranking all candidates in an election in order of preference managed to attract more than one million votes in the Commonwealth, but it wasn’t enough to pass.
Evan Falchuk, campaign manager for “Yes on 2,” said the process is designed to give candidates an incentive to appeal to a wide swath of voters, rather than catering to the most extreme partisans.
“You know, at a time when there’s so much division in American politics, it’s a tool that helps create consensus,” Falchuk contended.
In ranked-choice voting, if no candidate gets a majority, the last place finisher is eliminated, and the second choice of that candidate’s voters is redistributed, and so on until someone has more than 50%. It allows voters to choose a third-party candidate without boosting the chances of the candidate they oppose.
Falchuk praised Massachusetts election officials for an election that ran smoothly despite all the challenges.
He added the crush of news with the presidential election, and the restrictions on campaigning during the pandemic, made it difficult to get the word out about ranked-choice voting.
“The truth is, it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint,” Falchuk admitted. “And reform like this is for people that are persistent and who believe in making our democracy stronger.”
The group Common Cause also expressed relief that the voting went well, but called on the Legislature to consider same-day registration.
A spokesperson for Common Cause said election watchdogs fielded dozens of complaints from voters with registration problems, who ended up casting provisional ballots that will only be counted if they can prove an error on the part of the government.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.