About a week after Easthampton — one of two cities in the state with ranked-choice voting — ushered in Salem Derby as its new mayor, he along with dozens of legislators and residents from across the state made a push on Beacon Hill last week in favor of a bill that would give Massachusetts cities and towns the power to adopt the same voting system.
“My experience with this was really positive. The way that the campaigns treated each other, the way that we campaigned was significantly different than in a single winner election,” said Derby at a hearing held by the Joint Committee on Election Laws last Thursday, Nov. 13, to gather feedback about bill S.531, which would give communities a local option for ranked-choice voting in municipal elections.
“Normally if you were out campaigning knocking doors, you would avoid people who have your opponents signs in their yards,” explained Derby, who won a three-way race on Nov. 4 in the largest voter turnout in Easthampton’s history. “I was seeking them out because I was able to say, ‘hey this is why I think you should support me and if you don’t, this is why you should make me your second.'”
In addition to Easthampton, which adopted the practice in 2019 for single-seat elections including mayor and precinct council, Cambridge is the other community that uses ranked-choice voting, though another 27 other cities and towns are pursuing the option, according to Voter Choice Massachusetts. Among those are Amherst and Northampton, which OK’d the system in 2018 and 2020, respectively.
Massachusetts voters, however, rejected a ballot measure in 2020 that would have adopted the voting practice for state elections. The question failed with about 54% voting against the idea. However, 78 municipalities voted yes and nearly a dozen communities — including Easthampton, Amherst and Northampton — have submitted home rule petitions.
At last week’s hearing, state Sen. Rebecca Rausch, D-Norfolk, Worcester and Middlesex, who sponsored the bill, said the state has been blocking home-rule petition requests by many communities to adopt ranked-choice voting.
“These are the wishes and wills of the voters in those municipalities and as it stands right now, we on Beacon Hill are standing in the way of towns and cities implementing the will of their voters,” Rausch testified.
She said this bill will not adopt ranked-choice voting statewide, but rather gives municipalities the option to use it in their communities. “Even though the voters said this is what they want, they still are blocked. We should honor that and get out of the way,” she said.
Easthampton Precinct 4 Warden Daniel Gilbert echoed this idea, noting that the Legislature has been refusing to pass home-rule petitions for ranked-choice voting since 2020. Some communities have submitted the requests for several sessions in a row, he said in an email to the Gazette.
Gilbert, who testified in favor of the bill, said that the practice has not led to confusion for the three times it’s been used in Easthampton.
“As an election warden, I spend all of election day interacting with voters,” he said. “Voter confusion has not been a thing.”
Also testifying at the hearing were state Rep. Homar Gómez, D-Easthampton, and Easthampton City Councilor Thomas Peake, who talked about the benefits of ranked-choice voting in the city’s contested election two weeks ago.
“I think this is really important to say, this past election we had a record of people voting and I think one of the reasons is that people felt comfortable to vote because we were using ranked-choice voting,” Gómez said.
The system has gone so well that Gómez has filed bill H.835 that would adopt ranked-choice voting in Easthampton for multi-seat elections, including at-large city council and school committee.
Through ranked-choice voting (RCV), if a candidate gets a majority — more than 50% — of the first-choice votes, they win outright. However, if nobody gets a first-place majority, then the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated and another round of tabulation begins. Voters who ranked the eliminated candidate first on their ballot will instead have their second-ranked vote count, if they listed one. If not, their vote will not be counted.
On election day in Easthampton, none of the three candidates got a first-place majority in the first round — Derby received roughly 40%, Lindsi Sekula 34% and Jason “JT” Tirrell 26%.
Tirrell was eliminated and out of the 1,504 first-place votes he received, 862 were exhausted meaning the voter did not rank a second choice. Out of the voters that ranked a second choice, 439 put Derby and 203 put Sekula. Derby then had the majority.
“There was some concern that this three-way race could turn ugly, but the candidates understood that their success or failure might rely on them reaching outside of their base and being someone’s second-choice vote,” Peake testified. “What we ended up experiencing was a positive, issue-based election, in which the candidate with the broadest support ultimately won.”
On the surface, ranked-choice voting may only seem to change how votes are weighed. But as Peake said, it changes the election dynamic. Candidates have an incentive to campaign for second choice votes as well.
Additionally, as someone said at the hearing, the system eliminates preliminary elections that requires another day of voting and saves money for the municipality.
While there was a wealth of support for ranked-choice voting at the hearing, it does have opposition and is not overwhelmingly supported across Massachusetts.
Amherst, Northampton
Separate bills on the agenda at last week’s hearing included H.4098 filed by Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, and H.4189 filed by Rep. Mindy Domb, D-Amherst.
“I believe RCV would be a major benefit for Northampton, and I hope this is the year we are finally able to move our home rule petition forward,” Sabadosa said in an email to the Gazette. “While I recognize that voters rejected RCV at the state level a few years ago, it is time for municipalities that want to use RCV to be allowed to implement it.”
Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, is a sponsor for both bills, that would adopt ranked-choice voting, respective to each community’s form of government.
Neither representative spoke at the hearing, though Amherst Town Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke spoke in favor of ranked-choice voting in Amherst and served as vice chair on the Charter Commission that created the draft for the bill.
She said, “The Charter Commission spent 18 months listening to and responding to the residents of Amherst on their ideal form of government,” which resulted in “universal” support from residents and all nine members of the council.
She said considering how rare it is to see unanimous support for something in Amherst, it shows how people feel about ranked-choice voting and its potential. It was intended to be implemented by 2021 and is currently the only part of the Amherst charter that has not been fully adopted.