Massachusetts Voters Said No to Ranked Choice Voting

Voters of Massachusetts on Nov. 3 said “no” to a reform that would have dramatically altered the way voters choose their elected leaders, rejecting a ballot question backed by a number of current and former political leaders from both parties that would have allowed voters in future statewide elections to rank candidates in races with three or more choices on the ballot...

...With 80 percent of precincts reporting, the ranked choice voting question trailed with 45.5 percent supporting the initiative and 54.5 percent opposed, despite proponents raising nearly $10 million and vastly outspending opponents who raised just over $3,500...

https://masslawyersweekly.com/2020/11/04/voters-embrace-auto-repair-question-reject-voting-reform/

Frank DeFilippo: Pulling Rank

...Lierman’s daughter, Del. Brooke Lierman (D), of South Baltimore, wants to give the Baltimore City Council the authority to cook election-day books. Translated, legislation she’s sponsored would let the Council decide whether to establish open primaries and “ranked choice” elections in the city.

These are loopy ideas that have their origins in such mellowed-out places as California and Takoma Park, and if the rest of the nation has learned anything it’s to follow the lead of neither of the two. One is increasingly unfit for human habitation and the other has bunkered itself into a nuclear-free stupor. Both fancy themselves as incubators for advanced thinking...

...Ranked choice elections, and their variations, are supposed to prevent candidates from winning with less than a majority of votes. They have approached disaster in Maine, the only state to adopt the controversial system, and a cumbersome system in the several California cities that have instituted the ranking system. (Ranked choice voting is also under considering in the Montgomery County legislative delegation; Takoma Park uses the system in municipal elections now.)

Ranked choice elections delay returns as well as results while election board math whizzes tinker with algorithms to chase the elusive 50.1 percent and in some elections have failed to reach the magic qualifying number. In Baltimore, often as few as 20 percent of the voters control 100 percent of the vote. That dismal performance probably won’t change with ranked choice, though the margin of victory theoretically would. Who would we be kidding but ourselves?

Essentially, ranked choice elections are the new politics plugged into the old. They institutionalize the old political machine trickery of “single-shooting” that is a common behind-the-curtain practice of political insiders but is little-known to the general public.

Here’s how it works: Let’s say there are six candidates running for five judgeships on the ballot and a voter prefers one over the other five. Instead of voting for five of the six, the voter casts a single vote for their preferred candidate, thus giving their candidate a vote and the others none. That single vote has a multiplier effect of five in the electoral advantage. Single-shooting was how political machine entrenched itself for decades.

And so it goes with ranked voting. Voters rank candidates according to preference. And in tallying the votes, candidates are eliminated from the bottom up until one at the top achieves a fraction more than 50 percent of the vote for a simple majority. Name recognition and incumbency would dominate the ballot...

https://www.marylandmatters.org/2019/01/13/frank-defilippo-pulling-rank/

"...voter dissatisfaction is why the citizens of Burlington, Vt., repealed ranked-choice voting in 2010"

Should Montgomery County voters get to rank their second-choice candidates?

...But researchers studying the system in San Francisco, where ranked-choice voting has existed for more than 20 years, and in Maine, which has used ranked-choice voting for some local contests since 2010 and tried it for a congressional race for the first time this year, say the benefits of ranked-choice voting are limited.

“Changing the rules isn’t going to necessarily change the outcomes,” said Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University. “People should be aware of the limits and weigh those with the possible negative consequences.”

Ohio State University professor Vladimir Kogan studied four races in which the system was used, including the 2010 Oakland, Calif., mayoral race. He found that candidates struggled to win majorities and that huge numbers of ballots had to be discarded in the redistribution process.

In a few other races, the first-place finisher won a plurality of votes and was defeated because the next runner-up collected more votes in the runoff rounds, causing voters to question the election’s legitimacy, experts said.

In Maine, Republican congressional candidate Bruce Poliquin won the popular vote but lost to Democrat Jared Golden after ­second-choice votes were counted.

Poliquin challenged the voting rules in court as unconstitutional, but the judge tossed the case. Poliquin is appealing.

University of Maryland professor James Gimpel, who testified on Poliquin’s behalf, said voter dissatisfaction is why the citizens of Burlington, Vt., repealed ranked-choice voting in 2010.

“They wound up with a result where the candidate with the most first-choice votes didn’t win,” he said. “They felt like the wrong person had won.”..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/should-montgomery-county-voters-get-to-rank-their-second-choice-candidates/2018/12/18/2682518c-0250-11e9-9122-82e98f91ee6f_story.html?utm_term=.5c9f6bcee69a

Ranked Voting: Voters are not required to select multiple options, so ballots with only one candidate are simply removed if that selection falls out of the running.

...There’s no indication that it actually does [benefit voters],” Eberly said. “Advocates for it see it as this beautiful cure-all, that people wouldn’t waste their vote, they would feel more comfortable voting for third parties, there would never be a plurality winner. Ranked choice voting comes with its own set of flaws that our plurality system has.”..

State legislature to consider proposal that could give Montgomery County new ranking system for local races

Outcome of Maine Election Different Under Ranked Choice Voting

This is the voting system that the Montgomery County Delegation wants to use in Montgomery County.

...Under Maine's system, voters rank their preferred candidates to allow for an "instant runoff" by counting second-choice votes from people who supported last-placed candidates, repeating the process until a candidate secures victory with more than 50 percent of the vote. The system is used for federal elections, but not for state legislative or gubernatorial races, after being approved by Maine voters in a recent ballot initiative.

Poliquin led Golden, 46.4 percent to 45.5 percent, in first-place votes. But Golden, a Marine veteran and state representative, prevailed after the ranked-choice votes were tabulated...

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/15/jared-golden-maine-election-993293