Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Poor messaging is why ranked elections got rejected in Massachusetts

Bowe is a documentarian and journalist whose most recent project is "American Spring," a series of short films about aspects of the democracy reform movement.

After interviewing Maine voters in 2018 about their ranked-choice voting experiences, I was left with a firm understanding of what was required for voters to embrace this reform. Nearly every voter who expressed enthusiasm for this alternative election method said they remembered it was painful living for most of this decade with a governor, Republican Paul LePage, who was elected to his two terms with 38 percent and the 48 percent of the votes.

That kind of pain demands relief, particularly given Maine's uniquely strong political culture of supporting third-party candidates. But what other voters in the United States experience similar political pain when voting in general elections? None that I can think of.

So, when the RCV movement came to my home state of Massachusetts, that was the bar that had to be cleared: Convincing voters to solve a problem — the lack of majority winners in multi-candidate general elections — that they don't currently have.

That's a very high bar. I did not attempt to address this when I produced an installment of my documentary series on ranked elections, featuring Maine voters who supported RCV. Ballot questions are simple "Yes" or "No" choices. People who both understand and embrace the rationale for a proposed change vote yes. But if they have any doubts — any at all — they generally play it safe and vote no.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Clearly the RCV issue did not clear that basic but essential hurdle in the minds of Massachusetts voters. Last week they voted 55 percent to 45 percent against switching to ranked elections for all primaries and general elections for Congress, governor and other statewide executive positions, the Legislature and some countywide posts.

Without voters having a visceral understanding of why they need to support RCV, the way Maine voters did, the for and against arguments cancel each other out and "no" becomes the default choice. I experienced that firsthand many times in direct and social media conversations with friends and acquaintances. One exchange stands out:

"From what I understand" a friend said, RCV would polarize the country further by allowing the most extreme candidates in a partisan primary to win, setting up a general election without any moderate candidates. Ironically, he cited the very same congressional election this year that RCV advocates pointed to, for different reasons: The Democratic primary for an open House seat in Massachusetts this summer, won by moderate Jake Auchincloss with just 23 percent in a nine-person field where the other top candidates were far to his left.

Had RCV been in place, my friend asserted, the moderate would have had no chance to be nominated.

I was caught off guard hearing two advantages I see in RCV — winning candidates always have a majority of support, and consensus-oriented campaign strategies will work best — turned upside down. It is a sign of our times that two rational people can look at the same set of facts and reach different conclusions.

After batting down some of the usual RCV misperceptions, like the unfairness of some people getting multiple votes and the "it's too complicated" complaint, I had to tackle my friend's suspicions of something fishy about the first application of RCV in Maine resulting in a Republican congressman's defeat in 2018 — reenforcing, for him, the false narrative that RCV is a liberal Trojan horse to gain power.

I pointed out that if neighboring New Hampshire had used a ranking system in 2016, Republican Kelly Ayotte would have been reelected to the Senate because a Libertarian acted as the spoiler, receiving more votes than Ayotte's margin of defeat. The same thing happened in my friend's congressional district two years before: The Republican challenger he supported lost to a vulnerable incumbent Democrat because a Libertarian (again) acted as the spoiler for the Republican. (This raises a puzzling question as to why so many Republicans oppose RCV based on one election in Maine. There is strong evidence they would benefit from an RCV system limiting the Libertarian spoiler phenomenon.)

Then I appealed to his pain, a pain that intuitively exists with many voters on both left and right. I reminded him of our "common ground" frustrations with the current political environment: the power of the partisan duopoly, and the silencing of many voices in campaigns, sustained by the current binary voting system.

I hit a nerve and explained how ranked elections would remedy this.

"Well now that you put it that way" he said, he felt he could support the idea. I assume he still voted no on the Massachusetts ballot question, because he was not getting any reinforcing messages about the pain RCV alleviates for him. Instead he got a cacophony of voices, giving less weight to paid advertising and more to the views of a popular governor and several influencers who opposed the measure.

So far, the post-mortem on why the proposal failed focuses on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on grassroots canvassing and how it created anxiety in voters, making them less prone to disturb the status quo. While Covid-19 impacted the election, it cannot be blamed for a 10-point blowout in which the winners spent $10,000 and the losers $10 million.

The problem was much deeper. The messaging did not resonate. At best, the message was that ranked elections are "neat to have," not that it could solve problems that afflict voters. As a passionate supporter of RCV, it pains me to write that. But the numbers don't lie.

In a time of massive voter dissatisfaction with our political system — much of it related to the two-party stranglehold — the democracy reform movement could not convince voters to adopt reform. This requires a fundamental rethinking of the messaging strategy.

Read More

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump shaking hands
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the 2019 G20 summit in Oasaka, Japan.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Shameful Concessions Will Not End Putin’s Threat to World Peace

Our President has proposed a shameful give-away of Crimea and an additional chunk of Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. This compounds President Obama’s shameful acquiescence in Putin’s seizing Crimea, and President Biden’s also failing to live up to the security assurances that the United States and Russia gave Ukraine in 1994 when Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal in the Budapest Memorandum.

From my experience as a litigation attorney who participated in numerous mediations before retiring, I have found that successful mediations require a realistic assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, wants, and needs of the parties, including their willingness to take a calculated risk. In court, one never knows what a judge or jury will do. The outcome of war is likewise uncertain. In negotiations, wants should not obscure a realistic assessment of one’s needs. A party’s unmet true nonnegotiable needs can justify the risk. What are the needs of Ukraine, Russia, and the West?

Keep ReadingShow less
Michael Rivera: The Importance of Getting Involved
- YouTube

Michael Rivera: The Importance of Getting Involved

Michael Rivera is the Berks County Commissioner. The Republican began serving in January of 2020.

"My number one priority is fiscal responsibility," Rivera said in describing the focus of his work as County Commissioner. "Counties generate their money primarily through property taxes. My commitment to the residents of Berks County is to be fiscally responsible with their money."

Keep ReadingShow less
Red State Voters Approved Progressive Measures. GOP Lawmakers Are Trying to Undermine Them.

Republican Sen. Kim Hammer, left of center, answers questions about proposed laws that would alter the citizen-initiated ballot measure process during an Arkansas Senate committee hearing in February.

Credit:Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate

Red State Voters Approved Progressive Measures. GOP Lawmakers Are Trying to Undermine Them.

Across the country, Republican lawmakers have been working to undermine or altogether undo the will of the voters by making it harder to pass amendments and laws through citizen-led initiatives.

In Missouri, the 2025 legislative session was dominated by Republican lawmakers trying to reverse two major measures that voters had put on the ballot and approved just months before; one made abortion in the state legal again, while the other created an employee sick leave requirement.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Populist podcasters love RFK Jr., and he took the same left-right turn toward Trump as they did
Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Tariffs, Vaccines & Chronic Disease: The Hidden Link

When public figures take actions that contradict both expert consensus and common sense, we’re left to wonder: What are they thinking?

Two recent examples—Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine rhetoric—illustrate the puzzling nature of such choices.

Keep ReadingShow less