U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy, City Councilor Andrea Campbell and former Councilor Tito Jackson rallied a crowd in Grove Hall Monday in support of ballot question 2, which would create a ranked-choice voting system in Massachusetts.
“On the ballot tomorrow, you guys have heard all about this over the course of the past four years, it’s about racial justice, it’s about equity, it’s about climate justice and economic justice, but in order to actually get there, in order to fulfill those platforms and those goals, we need to have electoral justice,” Kennedy said. “We need to make sure that the people, the candidates, are the people that we want to see in office are able to win and to make sure that the people representing us, at every level of government, actually have support from our people.”
In a ranked choice voting system, voters can choose multiple candidates, ranking them from their top choice to their last choice. By counting voters’ second-choice candidates, the system allows voters to choose a candidate they like best, even if that candidate has little chance of winning.
The system would also prevent a candidate from winning with less than a majority of votes. In the nine-way race to succeed Kennedy in the 4th Congressional district, Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss, widely seen as one of the more conservative candidates in the running, won with just 23% of the vote.
Campbell said the system would help improve the odds for women and people of color.
“Municipalities that have adopted ranked choice voting have found that it makes it easier for candidates of color to win,” she said.
Polls open Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. for voting. In total, 159,000 Bostonians have cast ballots in this election already accounting for 36.5% turnout. By comparison, we had 66.75% total turnout in the 2016 election.
