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Voter Choice for Massachusetts
Shauna Hamilton (left), with Joel Paul and Jim Henderson on July 1 before delivering their final boxes of signed petitions to the secretary of state in Boston.
The Fahey Q&A with Shauna Hamilton, who's working for more voter choice in Massachusetts
Sep 28 2020
After organizing the Voters Not Politicians 2018 ballot initiative that put citizens in charge of drawing Michigan's legislative maps, Fahey became founding executive director of The People, which is forming statewide networks to promote government accountability. She interviews colleagues in the world of democracy reform each month for our Opinion section.
<p>A few years ago, Shauna Hamilton was working in hospitality management when she met a volunteer canvasser, which led to a change of career path. Now she's the deputy campaign manager for <a href="https://www.yeson2rcv.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Yes on 2</a>, the group behind a Massachusetts referendum on the November ballot that would switch to ranked-choice elections for most offices in the state. Her campaign was preparing for a second round of signature-gathering on ballot petitions when Covid-19 hit. Forced to abandon in-person canvassing, it won permission from the state's top court to go online — a national first — and ultimately got 129,000 valid signatures, a state record for a ballot measure.</p><p>Our recent conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>What is ranked-choice voting?</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>You have the option to rank candidates in order of preference. You can rank as many or as few as you'd like, or still choose to vote for only one candidate. A candidate can win outright by receiving more than 50 percent of first-choice votes. If not, the one with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and those votes are reallocated to each voter's second choice, so no vote is wasted. This process repeats until one candidate has a majority. </p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>Why do ranked-choice elections matter now?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>The current system has led to a lack of choice for voters, a lack of competition in elections and crippling political division. Ranked elections give voters more power, stripping power away from special interests and big-money donors. They expand voter choice and encourage more candidates to run without the fear of vote-splitting, and would make Massachusetts' government more representative of the state's diversity across ages, races and genders. In a climate with so much division, ranked-choice voting is needed to build consensus across the political spectrum.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>Which elections would this reform impact?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>Primaries and general elections for many positions starting in 2022 — including county offices like district attorney and sheriff, statewide posts like governor and congressional and Senate seats. Ranked-choice voting would not be used in the presidential election, presidential primaries, or for city or town elections.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>What are the voters telling you?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>Polling shows when people know what ranked-choice voting is, they like it and want to vote for it. We've known this, anecdotally, for a long time. There's a dead heat between folks who support ranked-choice voting and those who don't; <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/08/12/wbur-poll-ranked-choice-voting-ballot-question" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a poll in August</a> found 36 percent plan to vote "yes" and 36 percent "no" with the remaining 28 percent undecided. Of voters who understand ranked-choice voting "very well," 52 percent supported it and 37 percent didn't. That's a really big margin. These numbers tell us that educating voters should be our first priority.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p><strong>Fahey:</strong> How did you become involved with the campaign?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>I joined as a volunteer in January 2018. A canvasser approached with a clipboard and asked if I wanted to get involved with the ranked-choice voting movement. At the time, I was making a career shift and had been trying to get involved with something nonpartisan that could alleviate the division in our politics. I made the trip to the first meeting because all the volunteers I'd spoken to were so passionate — that's the power of volunteers connecting with folks!</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>What's the history of Yes on 2?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>After Maine in 2016 became the first state to pass statewide ranked-choice voting, a group in Massachusetts — including lawyers, professors, data analysts and activists — formed to say, "We're going to be next." Initially the questions were about how to connect with people and build a list of supporters and volunteers. At first it was purely an educational organization, volunteer-led for about a year and a half. As we brought on more volunteers and eventually hired a few staff, we expanded into a legislative effort as well as a push for a statewide vote. We filed two bills in 2019, one for ranked-choice statewide elections and the other to provide a ranked-choice option to municipalities. Through our volunteers' phone banking, we secured 86 co-sponsors for those bills.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>How has the coronavirus pandemic impacted your campaign?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>We began circulating petitions last fall to get our reform on the ballot. The state Constitution required us to submit two rounds of signatures: a minimum of 80,239 in the first round, then at least 13,374 more. We completed our first round in December — and thought the second round would be a piece of cake. We didn't know we'd soon be operating in a very different world. Covid-19 meant that we couldn't stand outside a grocery store or on a street corner. Fortunately, the Supreme Judicial Court allowed us to gather signatures electronically. Then, our volunteers and organizational partners blew it out of the water.</p><p>We're not knocking on doors due to Covid-19, so connecting with voters through phone banking is more important than ever. People are voting earlier this year, in person and by mail, so we need to get ahead and inform them about our campaign. Social media, television ads and radio also broaden our reach significantly. <a href="https://youtu.be/fxhm9ob23uc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Our first TV ad</a> went out two weeks ago.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>If you were speaking to a high school student or new immigrant, how would you describe what being an American means to you?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>To me, it means having the opportunity to participate in our political process, and that's something I had previously taken for granted. Working on this campaign, I've seen that when you speak out to your legislators, the good ones listen. Having the ability to disagree with what our leaders are doing, and to be able to freely voice that, is very special to me.</p>
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First ranked-choice presidential vote will be in Maine this fall, state's top court decides
Sep 22 2020
There is no more doubt: Ranked-choice voting will be used for the first time in a presidential election this year.
Voters in Maine will be allowed to list their candidates in order of preference, and its four electoral votes will only be awarded to those who get a majority's support, under a decision Tuesday from the state Supreme Court.
The ruling is a huge symbolic victory for advocates of ranked elections, who view them as a magic formula for improving democracy by reducing the major parties' influence, encouraging more consensus-building campaigns, promoting the prospects of outsiders — and guaranteeing winners can claim a mandate because they have been endorsed by most voters.
<p>The justices unanimously rejected the state Republican Party's efforts to force a referendum in November on the future of so-called <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/ranked-choice-voting" target="_self">RCV</a> in the state, the first to use the system in contests for many state offices and Congress. Under Maine's rules for a "people's veto," getting that measure on the 2020 ballot would have automatically prevented RCV's application in the contest among President Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden and three minor-party candidates.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Now, voters will be allowed to rank all of them. If no one is the top choice on most ballots, the candidate with the fewest No. 1 votes will be dropped and their votes will be redistributed to the No. 2 choices — that process continuing in a series of computer-driven runoffs until one of them (presumably Trump or Biden) has garnered majority backing.</p><p>Maine already does things differently. It's one of two states, with Nebraska, that awards two electoral votes to the statewide winner and one vote to the person who prevails in each House district. </p><p>Trump narrowly carried the rural 2nd District in 2016, but at first blush his chances of repeating that look to go down because of the use of RCV. Two years ago, the Republican holding that congressional seat secured the most first place votes but was defeated after the instant runoff system redistributed most of the ballots of the lesser candidates to Democrat Jared Golden.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Critics say the system is needlessly complex and can disenfranchise voters who don't understand it.</p><p>Maine's high court concluded the GOP had not gathered enough valid signatures on its ballot petitions, siding with Democratic Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, who had tossed out several thousand of the 67,00 names submitted this summer. </p><p>Acting two weeks after ballots with RCV for president <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/maine-ranked-choice-voting-2647536680" target="_self">started rolling off the presses</a>, the justices reversed a lower court, which said the Republicans <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/maine-ranked-choice-voting-2647095829" target="_self">had met their burden</a> with 22 signatures to spare. The issue in the case was a narrow one — whether two of the petition circulators were required to be registered voters in the town where they were doing their canvassing. The high court said yes.</p><p>"This is a powerful moment for ranked-choice voting supporters," Rob Richie of <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/fairvote" target="_self">FairVote</a>, one of the most prominent RCV advocacy groups, exalted after the court decision. "America was founded on the promise that your vote matters. We haven't always lived up to that promise, but over time, our nation's citizens strived to ensure that every vote counts."</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>The ruling puts Maine on course to rely on rankings in its presidential primaries starting in 2024. This year the Democrats used RCV in five presidential primaries and caucuses.</p><p>The number of cities using ranked-choice voting has more than doubled in the past decade and will be used to choose the mayor of New York next year. Voters in Alaska and Massachusetts will decide in November whether their states will also use RCV almost exclusively in the future.</p>
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Maine, where voters were the first the use ranked-choice voting in a federal election, will print its 2020 election ballots with RCV for the presidential contest.
Ranked-choice voting remains on Maine ballot, but it's not over yet
Sep 09 2020
After months of back and forth, Maine will print ballots with ranked-choice voting for president this fall. But uncertainty about its use remains.
Democratic Secretary of State Matt Dunlap made the decision to start the presses on Tuesday. He acted hours after the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked the effort to get a referendum opposing presidential ranked-choice voting on the ballot in November, which would have prevented the use of the alternate election system in the 2020 contest.
Maine has been a voting reform trailblazer for years. In 2016, it became the first state to have ranked elections for almost all federal and state positions. If the most recent ruling stands, the state will also be the first to use so-called RCV to award electoral votes — a moment champions of the system eye as a watershed for their cause.
<p>Officials could not wait for the next phase of the fight to play out. They must start printing ballots Friday in order to send them to military and overseas voters in time for the general election.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Republicans, who lead the antagonism toward the system across the country, attempted to block its use in the presidential race by getting a so-called people's veto referendum on the ballot. When state officials concluded their piles of petitions had too many invalid signatures, they sued. </p>
<p>A trial court judge two weeks ago <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/maine-ranked-choice-voting-2647095829" target="_self">took the Republicans' sid</a>e and said the referendum had enough support for a spot on the ballot, but the top court put a hold on that decision until it could hear arguments on both sides and deliberate comprehensively. If the justices end up ruling for the GOP in the next eight weeks, election officials will be directed to not tabulate the presidential results using ranked-choice voting. </p>
<p>Joe Biden is favored to carry the state. But under an unusual state law an electoral vote goes to the winner in each congressional district, and President Trump has a shot at prevailing in one of them — especially if the votes for minor-party candidates are not redistributed in an instant runoff, as RCV provides.</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Regardless of the court's ruling, RCV will still be used in Maine's down-ballot races this year.</p>
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MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images
Supports of ranked-choice voting in Massachusetts rallied to support the alternative voting method in July.
As ranked-choice voting gains acceptance, critics push back
Aug 27 2020
Most Americans are accustomed to a winner-take-all voting process, making one, decisive choice between a multitude of candidates.
Ranked-choice voting changes the standard methodology. RCV allows voters to rank multiple candidates in order of personal preference, replacing a "plurality winner" system with a vastly different election process that hasn't been widely seen in the United States for some time.
This past year, ranked-choice voting has been having a sort of coming-out party. It was used in Democratic presidential primaries in four states as well as the Nevada caucuses. And referendums instituting ranked-choice voting are on the ballot this fall in five cities and three states — Alaska, Massachusetts and North Dakota.
<p>RCV advocates got a big boost in June when the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences included it among <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/american-academy-of-arts-and-sciences" target="_self">31 proposals for improving American democracy</a>. The report hailed ranked-choice voting as a more representative system for choosing candidates while eliminating campaign mudslinging that comes with every election cycle.</p><p>(Nevertheless, a judge in Maine <a data-linked-post="2647095829" href="https://thefulcrum.us/maine-ranked-choice-voting-2647095829" target="_blank">approved a ballot measure</a> to invalidate ranked-choice voting at the presidential level in the one place it already has been approved statewide.) </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>As ranked-choice voting has received more attention, it has also become subject to increased pushback. Some experts contend RCV can hurt voter participation and that it isn't necessarily more representative of voters' choices. </p><p>Though briefly implemented in the early 1940s across various states, RCV began a modest comeback in the U.S. more recently. Maine became the first state to pass statewide ranked-choice voting in 2016 and more than a dozen cities across the country, including San Francisco, Minneapolis and Cambridge, Mass,. are also using some form of RCV. New York will begin using it for city elections in 2021.</p><p>Under RCV, voters can rank candidates for each office in order of personal preference. If no one candidate earns a majority of first-choice ballots, the candidate with the lowest number of top-choice selections is eliminated and his or her votes are allocated to those voters' second-choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate earns a majority. The system is also known as instant runoff voting.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>By allowing voters to rank multiple candidates, advocates for RCV say fewer ballots are wasted. Many voters cast ballots early for candidates that end up dropping out of a race, with those ballots no longer contributing to the outcome of an election.</p><p>According to a <a href="https://docsend.com/view/jnu3d442irjgaagb" target="_blank">report</a> by Unite America, a nonpartisan good-government advocacy organization, during this year's presidential primaries approximately 3 million ballots were cast across 14 states for candidates who had already withdrawn from the race. Those ballots were "wasted," according to the report. In California alone, <a href="https://calmatters.org/politics/california-election-2020/2020/03/voting-california-dropped-out-candidates-super-tuesday/" target="_blank">local media reported</a> nearly 400,000 ballots were cast in the Democratic presidential primary for candidates who were no longer in the race. (Unite America provides financial support to The Fulcrum.)</p><p>In Democratic presidential contests, candidates need to retain 15 percent of the vote in order to earn delegates, with Republican contests requiring 20 percent, creating the potential for candidates no longer running to earned enough support to remain as contenders in the presidential election under a RCV voting system.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>RCV advocates say that counting more ballots in an election is more reflective of an electorate's voice, and in turn more democratic. But under the plurality system, where the candidate who earns the most ballots wins, someone who receives less than 50 percent of the vote can still be declared a winner. For example, during Illinois' March primary, Democrat Marie Newman won the nomination for a U.S. House seat with 47.3 percent of the vote. And in May, Republican Cliff Bentz won a House primary with 31.4 percent. Both are favored to win in the fall.</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.fairvote.org/plurality_wins_in_2020_a_violation_of_america_s_majority_rule_principle" target="_blank">blog post</a>, FairVote, a nonpartisan champion of ranked-choice voting, highlighted Newman's win as an example of the flaws with plurality voting and questioned whether these winners are actually the most preferred candidates by their constituents. </p><p>With ranked-choice voting, voters might feel more empowered because they can support their first choice — perhaps not a major-party candidate — and still have the power to back other candidates they like without sacrificing their vote. And, proponents says, candidates would be more inclined to wage a civil campaign in order to earn secondary placement on ballots.</p><p>"It really changes the incentives for candidates engaging with voters and voters having that greater ability to make their vote count. It's really quite a dramatic way to do it," said Rob Richie, CEO and president of FairVote.</p><p>FairVote conducted an <a href="https://www.fairvote.org/research_rcvvoterturnout" target="_blank">analysis of voter turnout</a> in six local jurisdictions in California, Minnesota and New Mexico that implemented RCV. The data showed an uptick in voter participation after the system was changed.</p><p>However, some experts contend that ranked-choice voting isn't the perfect solution to finding a stronger, more representative voting system. James Campbell, professor of political science at the University of Buffalo, published a paper this year analyzing the effects of ranked-choice voting in Maine. He said that in some RCV elections, the winning candidates did not receive a majority of the total votes cast because a significant number of voters did not rank the full field of candidates, a phenomenon known as "ballot exhaustion." Campbell argues this defeats the purpose of RCV's intent to represent a majority of voters.</p><p>"Portraying ranked-choice voting as getting so many more people out, and participating and the choice, they may be out to vote for their first or second candidate but after that there's a lot of drop off," said Campbell.</p><p>Others argue for yet other alternative systems, like approval voting. Fargo, N.D., is the only jurisdiction currently using this system, which allows voters to support multiple candidates without ranking them. Proponents claim it is less complicated for both voters and those charged with tallying the ballots. St. Louis voters will decide in November whether to implement a version of approval voting.</p><p>FairVote's Richie recognizes many of the critiques that come with RCV, but says context is critical when analyzing the outcome of RCV implementation. The competitiveness of a race, the number of candidates running and the overarching political climate can be exclusive to a certain election cycle and can widely influence voter participation. </p><p>To consider some of those concerns, New York City conducted an <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bfc4cecfcf7fde7d3719c06/t/5d83dffbf8b08c5b3087ecc4/1568923645088/Final+Report_8.2.pdf" target="_blank">analysis</a> of ranked-choice voting prior to putting it on the November 2019 ballot for voter approval. The city heard testimony from RCV advocacy organizations, including FairVote, that affirmed ranking a large number of candidates "can help ameliorate the issue of ballot exhaustion." </p><p>Advocates recommended that the city limit voters to ranking five or six candidates as "ballot exhaustion is especially uncommon when voters can rank a reasonable number of candidates."</p><p>On top of potential ballot exhaustion, Campbell argued that in certain circumstances like a general election, the pressure should be on all voters to make a clear choice. In the instance that a voter's first choice doesn't earn enough of a majority and their vote is reassigned to their second choice candidate, Campbell said that change is "not really democratic in a sense."</p><p>"I think it's psychologically very different to have somebody make that decision as opposed to having their votes used as though they made that decision," said Campbell. </p><p>Richie contends that people should not treat ranked-choice voting as a perfect solution, but merely a better option to the current plurality voting system. By looking at the growing data on RCV comprehensively, Richie feels confident it has the potential to effect positive change across the country.</p><p>"I think that when you look at the fuller picture, I feel very confident that ranked-choice voting is doing good things," said Richie.</p>
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