Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Chairman Finegold, Chairman Ryan, and Members of the Joint Committee on Election Laws:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I chair the Issues Committee at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for progressive policy here in the Commonwealth. A core part of our platform is an electoral system that expands voting, the electorate, and its trust in candidates and elected officials.
Accordingly, we urge you to give a favorable report to S.485/H.825: An Act providing a local option for ranked choice voting in municipal elections.
When voters get to the ballot box, they can face complicated choices. Our first-past-the-post system forces ordinary voters to weigh whether they can vote for their preferred candidate or whether doing so would lead to a “spoiler effect” that gives a candidate they like less a clearer path to victory. This same dynamic can lead candidates and their supporters to try to force similar candidates out of a race due to a fear of “vote splitting.”
Within the current system, the ultimate winner may command less than a majority support, a contradiction of a basic tenet of democracy and a far too common occurrence in Massachusetts elections. Ranked Choice Voting would eliminate these problems by enabling voters to rank the order of their preferences on the ballot and ensuring that whoever wins does so with majority support.
Although the ballot initiative to implement Ranked Choice Voting for state and county elections did not pass last year, the measure did pass in 78 municipalities in varying parts of the Commonwealth. If such municipalities wish to adopt Ranked Choice Voting for local elections, they should not have to face undue hurdles to doing so.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Chair, Issues Committee
Progressive Massachusetts
