The Boston Globe is asking for ranked choice voting again. The last plea for Massachusetts to adopt ranked choice voting came in an editorial last month.
After viewing the results of Tuesday’s primaries, it is pretty obvious that something needs to change. The election that caused the dismay was the 3rd Congressional District’s race. 10 candidates competed for a seat in the Congress with Lori Trahan emerging as the victor. The issue was that fewer than 25% of the 84,872 voters actually voted for Trahan. That means that over 40,000 people chose someone other than the top two candidates, Koh and Trahan.
In the Globe’s editorial published on September 6, 2018, they stated:
“It’s hard to imagine a better advertisement for ranked-choice voting than this race, which featured an unusually diverse, high-caliber field.”
Lori Trahan emerged the winner with only a 52-vote margin over the second-place finisher Dan Koh. Both Koh and Trahan each received a little over 21% of the total vote.
The Globe ended the article with a call for the Massachusetts state legislature to pursue ranked choice voting:
“It’s no knock on Trahan, who earned her apparent win. But a more satisfying result for voters — and the candidates — would have been a system that gave them a better way to signal their preferences with such a large and talented field.”
You can read the full editorial here.
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