At Thursday’s Town Meeting, Hadley citizens can vote to adopt a new voting system for local elections called ranked choice voting.
The system allows voters to rank their candidate choices in order of preference. If your first choice candidate gets the least votes then the votes for that candidate are reallocated to the voter’s second choice. If your second choice candidate loses in round two, then your vote goes to your third choice. It’s a little more complicated than what we do now, but only because it gives the voter more power with their vote.
Why is a change important? Let’s face it, many of us feel really disillusioned with our current election climate — the negative campaigning, the lack of choices and the sense that our vote often doesn’t matter.
Over the years, participation in Hadley’s local elections has declined to 20 percent to 25 percent of registered voters. When many candidates run for a few seats, the winning candidate is often elected by a minority of the voters. Ranked choice voting changes this.
Hadley has been a leader in many arenas and now we can lead by improving the way we vote. With ranked choice voting, a majority of voters get one of their first choices in every election, so voters feel more satisfied with the results. Due to this satisfaction, voter turnout steadily increases as the years go by.
In addition, more candidates are motivated to run for office because they don’t have to run directly against someone in a local community. New candidates bring more ideas into the conversation about how to improve our community.
Ranked choice voting is being adopted all over the country. Almost four million Americans already use it in local elections.
Let’s tune up our democracy in Hadley by supporting ranked choice voting at the Town Meeting on Thursday.
Lynn Bowmaster
Hadley