Ranked Choice Voting = Confusingly Bad Idea
OCTOBER 2, 2020: As increased partisanship has led to further polarization and voter apathy, it is natural for people to seek ways to improve our system of democracy and find new ways to encourage election participation. While we believe that Question 2, so-called Ranked Choice Voting, is well intentioned, the change to our voting process that a Yes vote would bring about is both highly confusing and truly a bad idea.
Ranked Choice Voting = Confusingly Bad Idea
OCTOBER 2, 2020: As increased partisanship has led to further polarization and voter apathy, it is natural for people to seek ways to improve our system of democracy and find new ways to encourage election participation. While we believe that Question 2, so-called Ranked Choice Voting, is well intentioned, the change to our voting process that a Yes vote would bring about is both highly confusing and truly a bad idea.
If passed into law, Question 2 would replace the long held democratic principle of one person one vote with a new convoluted system in races where more than two candidates are on the ballot seeking the same position.
As the name implies, Rank Choice Voting means that in multi-candidate races voters would rank their vote preferences in terms of their 1st choice, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on. In a multi-candidate election where no candidate received a plurality of votes (more than 50% of votes cast), the Ranked Choice System would reallocate votes from the lowest vote getter, based on the rank assigned by voters, until a candidate wins with 50+ % of the vote total.
If what you are reading here seems confusing it is for the simple reason that Ranked Choice Voting IS confusing. We would also argue that it is unnecessary and would undermine the democratic process.
In fairness, we should add that some might accuse Mass Retirees of being opposed to Rank Choice Voting because we are a “special interest group” and that by design, Ranked Choice Voting is meant to lessen the influence of interest groups.
We take great pride in representing tens of thousands of individual public retirees. Our only ‘interest’ is in advocating for public retirees and looking out for our members. Complicated schemes designed to manufacture electoral outcomes are not in the best interest of retirees.
As the old adage goes, if it’s not broke don’t fix it. Our one person one vote democracy is not broken. Vote no on Question 2.