The debate over ranked-choice voting in Boston is more than just academic

Boston Globe

20-05-2025

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TODAY'S STARTING POINT
If a coalition of activists and the Boston City Council get their way, 'Who did you vote for?' may soon become a trickier question to answer in Boston. And that's on purpose.
Last week, the City Council
Advocates say RCV gives voters more choices and encourages candidates to earn broader support. New York City; Burlington, Vt., and other municipalities
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But not everyone is persuaded. Some lawmakers and political scientists question the benefits of RCV. Others worry that it will make elections more complicated for voters to participate in and for the city to run. Today's newsletter explains the debate.
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Advocates' case
For its supporters, the benefits of RCV flow from its design.
By letting voters pick whom they want most while also signaling who should get their support if that candidate doesn't win, RCV lets voters better express their preferences. People can cast ballots for third-party or independent candidates without worrying that their vote will be wasted — or worse, hand the election to a candidate they dislike.
'The biggest gain is that folks aren't feeling like they're left out,' said Edwyn Shoemaker, who runs Ranked Choice Boston, a coalition that advocated for the measure.
Voter turnout in municipal elections in Boston, as in most cities, tends to be low. But people who believe their vote matters are more likely to show up to cast it, Shoemaker argues. He cited
Boston municipal elections are technically nonpartisan, without a candidate's party affiliation listed on the ballot. Shoemaker thinks RCV can reduce polarization even more by giving candidates a reason to compete for voters outside their normal bases of support. It might even incentivize them to campaign more civilly, lest they alienate a rival's supporters who might otherwise rank them second or third.
Criticisms
Critics say RCV's advocates overstate its benefits, which can vary depending on the kind of election in which it's used. In a statewide race for president, for example, RCV might well prevent a third-party candidate from handing the election to a Democrat over a Republican, or vice versa.
But implementing it for municipal races to elect what's currently an all-Democratic city council might not change much. Most of the current district councilors won their seats with majorities of the vote, suggesting broad support even absent RCV. (RCV would work slightly differently for at-large city council seats, with a lower threshold for victory.) And in RCV elections elsewhere, the candidate with a plurality in the first round
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Other critics say RCV imagines an idealized electorate that doesn't really exist. Yes, many people know which candidates they prefer or do research before deciding whom to support. But expecting most voters to parse the sometimes-minute differences among candidates for local seats in a majority-Democratic city strains credulity, said Eitan Hersh, a Tufts political scientist.
'It's sort of like if I asked you, 'What's your favorite ice cream flavor?'' Hersh said. 'And then instead of that, I said, 'Okay, now you have to rank-order all the ice cream flavors.' It's kind of hard.'
Ranked-choice ballots also tend to be more complicated and time-consuming to fill out, and complexity breeds mistakes. According to
Some critics also think RCV will burden Boston's already strained election system. Councilor Ed Flynn
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The context
In between the advocates and critics are the ambivalent. Lee Drutman, a voting reform expert at New America, a Washington think tank, is in that camp. Once an RCV evangelist, he's come to
Does that mean the debate doesn't matter? The passions on both sides may instead reflect a more troubling phenomenon: growing dissatisfaction with American democracy. As voters become more pessimistic about the country's bitter partisan divides, some have evidently latched onto changes they hope will improve things — even if the evidence is mixed.
'People are looking for electoral reform,' Drutman said. 'RCV has caught on for particular reasons. But is it actually transformative enough to change the fundamentals of the system?'
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