NORTHAMPTON — After nine months and 13 meetings, the Ranked Choice Voting Committee has made its recommendations to the City Council for implementing a new method of voting in local elections, and city voters could get their final say on the plan as early as this September.
The committee, which first met in July 2021, submitted proposed special legislation that would eliminate the current system of voting for one candidate for each seat in a local election, called First Past the Post, and replace it with ranked choice voting (RCV) that allows for selecting multiple preferred candidates that are progressively eliminated based on their vote totals before a winner of each seat is declared.
The request for special legislation requires the blessing of the City Council, the state Legislature and the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Elections Division. During Thursday’s 7 p.m. virtual meeting, the City Council will hold its first reading of an order to advance the request.
“In our deliberations, the Committee attempted to craft an Act that would receive the requisite approval of the Legislature and the Elections Division,” chair Robert Boulrice and vice chair Catherine Kay wrote in a letter to City Council President James Nash and Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra.
“We started our work with a draft that was modeled after the recent state-wide referendum in 2020,” the letter reads. “While the referendum failed statewide, it passed with over 68% approval in Northampton.”
In an interview, Boulrice said the RCV committee chose to recommend a ballot question to affirm local support. Voters could decide on the question as soon as the legislative approvals occur, possibly as early as the preliminary state election in September if the request moves swiftly.
The legislation request includes plans for counting ranked votes in single-seat races like mayor and multi-seat races like City Council at-large, breaking ties and making future amendments to voting procedures.
Amherst has petitioned the state for approval to use RCV. Easthampton started using RCV in local elections last year, but the low number of candidates meant that only one round of vote counting was necessary, so there was no multi-round elimination process to determine the winners, a standard feature of the RCV system.
Northampton’s new system would eliminate local preliminary elections, which are currently held in September when needed to trim a high number of candidates before the general election.
Voters who do not wish to rank candidates would put the number 1 next to their only choice.
“It cannot be overstated that an effective, comprehensive education campaign has been seen to be vital to the smooth implementation and acceptance of RCV in every jurisdiction attempting to use it,” Boulrice and Kay wrote in their letter.
Boulrice told the Gazette that the best example of a public education campaign the committee found was in Minneapolis and that he would suggest using it as a model in Northampton.
The ne xt municipal election in Northampton, when RCV could be used for the first time, is scheduled for November 2023.
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.