Voters are evenly split on whether Massachusetts should become the second state to conduct most elections using ranked-choice voting, a decision they will make in November.
With 36 percent for the switch and 36 percent against it, 28 percent remain undecided in a poll released Tuesday — mainly because they are confused by the alternative election method or haven't yet tried to figure it out.
The numbers don't augur well for proponents of ranked elections, because support for ballot measures tends to fade as Election Day nears. At the same time, there's minimal organized opposition to bringing co-called RCV to the state, giving advocates continued hope of winning over the skeptical or ignorant in the next dozen weeks.
"I wouldn't be discouraged if I were a proponent because there is a lot of time and there's nobody making ... strong, well-funded counterarguments," Evan Horowitz of the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University told WBUR, the public radio station in Boston that commissioned the poll. "But I do think it's a reason to kind of reassess how much outreach has to be done."
The Yes on 2 campaign — which has bipartisan leadership headlined by former Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick and former Republican Gov. Bill Weld — says it's raised more than $2 million to push the referendum and will launch its advertising campaign after Labor Day.
Advocates argue the system produces more consensus-driven politicians, tamps down negative campaigning, weakens the polarized red-blue hold on elective offices and boosts the prospects of womenand candidates of color. The poll suggests that none of those arguments has won over the electorate yet.
"On each one of these things, you see a lot of people saying either 'It will make no difference to that' or 'I don't know whether it would,' " said Steve Koczela of MassINC, which conducted the poll of 501 likely voters last weekend. (It had a 4.4-percentage-point margin of error.)
The measure would switch primary contests and general elections for Congress, statewide executive positions, the Legislature and some countywide posts to RCV starting in 2022. Neighboring Maine is the only other state where the system is in such wide use, but it's also being used for local elections in a score of cities across the country — with New York joining the list next year.
Massachusetts, however, was in the vanguard of ranked elections because the city council and school board of Cambridge has used the system since 1941.
In RCV contests, voters are permitted to list candidates in order of preference. One who receives a majority of the top rankings wins outright. Otherwise, the one with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, those ballots are redistributed based on their second place designations, and this "instant runoff" process repeats until one candidate has a majority of support.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.