Boston Metropolis Council President Ruthzee Louijeune is main a brand new push to implement a ranked-choice voting system for municipal elections, 4 years after Massachusetts voters rejected the same statewide poll initiative.
In a house rule petition launched Wednesday, Louijeune argued that whereas 55% of Massachusetts voters in 2020 spurned a system the place voters would rank a sequence of candidates by desire reasonably than merely choose their best choice, there was truly “broad” assist for the change in Boston, the place 62% had been in favor.
Such a change, she mentioned, would “modernize how we vote and how every voice is heard in our elections.” It might additionally foster better civic engagement and scale back political polarization, she added.
“This is about making sure the majority of voters are content, are happy with who ends up winning the seat,” Louijeune mentioned.
“By moving from a top-two system to a top-four system, we allow more candidates to come forward from preliminary elections, ensuring that the final choices presented are reflective of a broader consensus — something that I know voters want to see more of, more consensus voting and less acrimony,” she mentioned.
The present voting system, Louijeune and her co-sponsors and fellow progressive councilors Julia Mejia and Henry Santana argue, creates situations the place voters could also be inadvertently benefiting their least most well-liked candidate when casting a poll for his or her prime decide — which their proposal seeks to repair.
The change would promote the highest 4 district council and mayoral candidates from the preliminary election, reasonably than the top-two-vote-getting candidates that presently advance. Voters would then rank as much as 4 candidates within the order of their desire for every race within the remaining municipal election.
If no candidate wins greater than 50%, the underside vote-getter is eradicated, and all the ballots that went to them are allotted to voters’ second-place selections. If nobody is above 50%, the method repeats, eliminating one candidate per spherical till there are solely two candidates left, at which level the one with essentially the most votes wins.
Louijeune, Mejia and Santana touted ranked-choice voting — adopted by the state of Maine and a handful of cities — as a method to empower candidates to run extra “positive, issue-focused campaigns, which would promote less adversarial political dialogue” by the use of candidates searching for to be a most well-liked second alternative, reasonably than the best choice.
The proposal is already dealing with related opposition to what voters cited 4 years in the past when defeating a statewide ranked-choice voting system, which is that it could be too sophisticated and complicated to voters, and damage democracy, reasonably than improve it as proponents of the change counsel.
Whereas Ed Flynn was the one councilor to talk in opposition when the house rule petition was introduced ahead at Wednesday’s assembly, it doesn’t seem to have a transparent path to passage on the Metropolis Council. 5 of 13 councilors didn’t signal onto the measure when it was referred to a subcommittee for additional dialogue.
Flynn mentioned the present system for electing the Metropolis Council works, whereas ranked-choice is “confusing” and “challenging” and creates a state of affairs the place exterior teams with the power to run high-dollar financing campaigns might have the power to get extra candidates into workplace, “regardless of what voters want.”
MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale shortly chimed in with a sharper rebuke, saying that the proposal was being superior by “Boston radicals who were rebuffed in their attempt to bring the measure back to the voters in 2024 on a statewide basis” and “represents a clear backdoor attempt to subvert the will of the voters.”
A house rule petition requires Metropolis Council and mayoral approval earlier than transferring on to the state Legislature for consideration, reasonably than a referendum vote.
“Ranked-choice voting undermines the election process, confuses voters, and can lead to scenarios where the candidate with the most votes doesn’t secure victory and the votes of voters are discarded entirely,” Carnevale mentioned in an announcement. “It’s not healthy for democracy and is a solution in search of a problem.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a co-sponsor of the same measure in Congress, shortly countered with an announcement of assist, saying, “Ranked-choice voting has proven to be a more accurate reflection of voters’ preferences for elected leadership and honors the foundational principles of representative democracy.
“With widespread efforts to suppress the vote and disenfranchise our communities nationwide, we need proactive reforms at every level of government to strengthen our democracy and empower the electorate,” Pressley added.
Louijeune acknowledged the criticism, saying she was optimistic that additional Council discussions would make the change much less “scary” and “misunderstood.”
“I know that change can be difficult,” Louijeune mentioned, “but change can also be better, and better for our city.”
