The Massachusetts ballot could include some far-reaching questions in 2020.
Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s office announced that supporters of four proposed questions had cleared perhaps the biggest hurdle in the state’s ballot initiative process.
The four questions aren’t yet guaranteed to appear on the 2020 ballot. Galvin’s office will now send the four questions that passed to the state Legislature, to give lawmakers the opportunity to act on them first. If legislators do not pass the proposals by May 5, supporters must gather and file an additional 13,374 signatures with Galvin’s office by July 1 to secure their question’s place on the Nov. 3 ballot.
One of them is a new way of voting: Law to Implement Ranked-Choice Voting in Elections
This proposed question would implement ranked choice voting for all state and federal elections (except for president) in Massachusetts beginning in 2022.
How ranked-choice voting works
Broadly speaking, the ranked-choice voting process (sometimes referred to as instant runoff voting) unfolds as follows:
Voters rank the candidates for a given office by preference on their ballots.
If a candidate wins an outright majority of first-preference votes (i.e., 50 percent plus one), he or she will be declared the winner.
If, on the other hand, no candidates win an outright majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated.
All first-preference votes for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots.
A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won an outright majority of the adjusted voters.
The process is repeated until a candidate wins a majority of votes cast.
This initiative is supported by Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, U.S. Representative Jim McGovern (D), U.S. Representative Lori Trahan (D), U.S. Representative Seth Moulton (D).
Editor’s note:
In the next few weeks we will bring you more information explaining how the system will work.
