Jennifer C. Braceras interviews Paul Craney from Mass Fiscal Alliance about the failed RCV initiative in Massachusetts and the future of ranked choice elections.
Transcript
Beverly Hallberg:
Hey, everyone. It’s Beverly Hallberg. Welcome to a special pop-up episode of She Thinks, your favorite podcast from the Independent Women’s Forum, where we talk with women, and sometimes men, about the policy issues that impact you and the people you care about most. Enjoy.
Jennifer:
Hello, everyone. This is Jennifer Braceras from the Independent Women’s Law Center. I’m joined today by Paul Craney, the spokesperson for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. How are you, Paul?
Paul:
I’m doing well, Jen. Thanks for having me on.
Jennifer:
Yeah, no problem. I’m looking forward to talking to you about a topic that I think a lot of our listeners don’t know too much about, and that is the topic of ranked-choice voting. I think, unless you live in Massachusetts, Alaska, or Maine, you probably haven’t heard all that much about it. So I’m hoping you can explain it to our listeners. But before we get into that, can you tell us a little bit about Mass Fiscal and what your organization does?
Paul:
Sure. So Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. I was a first hire and I helped start it in 2012. Since then, we’ve grown it to be the state’s largest nonprofit 501(c)(4) institution in Massachusetts. Jen, you’ve been gracious enough to be on our board as well, but what makes (c)(4) Mass Fiscal unique is we hold state house lawmakers accountable to their phone record on taxes, spending, the budget and transparency and how we do that is by engaging their constituents through grassroots advocacy.
So a lot of times that’s social media ads, direct mail, phone calls, door to door, when of course the weather is good and you don’t have a pandemic. But [inaudible 00:02:06] constituents to try to persuade them to change their opinion, vote a certain way, or just hold them accountable. Our website is massfiscal.org, and we actually have a legislative scorecard, which has found at massfiscal.org and it’s also found at massfiscalscorecard.org that has all 200 lawmakers in Massachusetts, their name, the picture, the party affiliation. And you could see how they vote on taxes, spending the budget, transparency. The higher the score, the more likely they are to vote with us.
Jennifer:
Right. And I think what’s interesting if people want to go on the website is it is a Massachusetts-based organization, but the issues are really issues that certainly all of the other New England states are looking at. And many of the other states across the nation are considering as well. So good government and fiscal responsibility are things that people care about across the country and they can learn a lot from your website about. But let’s transition a little bit and talk about ranked-choice voting. It is sometimes referred to as instant runoff voting. And I wonder if you could just explain what it is and where in this country it’s in use.
Paul:
Oh boy, what is it? Yeah. Depending on who you talk to, I think they can describe it certain ways, but basically it’s a system that has been loosely in place around the country in municipal elections sometimes against the past in different states or counties and municipalities. And at times it gets repealed. But it basically allows a voter to go to the voting booth. And if a candidate doesn’t receive 50% or more majority of the vote, then they start selecting the winner through a runoff process. But what makes this process unique is that when you go to vote, you do rank your candidates when you’re voting on Election Day. So, that process only kicks in if a candidate doesn’t get 50% or more. And I’m sure we’re going to talk about.
Jennifer:
So, the voter goes into the voting booth and instead of selecting, for example, Jim Jones versus John Smith for Senate, the person might rank Jim Jones first, John Smith second, Amy Brown third, and so on and so forth. Depending on how many candidates there are, they have an opportunity to list them all in order of preference. Is that correct?
Paul:
Yeah. That’s kind of how it’s done.
Jennifer:
Kind of how it’s done. Yeah, it’s a little more confusing than that. [crosstalk 00:00:05:05].
Paul:
I think the more you talk about it-
Jennifer:
I mean, that’s the simple pick.
Paul:
Yeah. You’re making it in a way that sounds so simple, maybe if you are one of the proponents in Massachusetts that would have won, but it does get really confusing very quickly.
Jennifer:
Right. So basically I know that in Maine, the way the ballots look, the voter doesn’t go in and list their candidates in order of preference. The voters’ names are on the ballot in whatever order the officials put them on the ballot. And then there are bubbles next to each person’s name, like a SAT test and there are columns for first, second, third, and fourth. So what the voter actually does in Maine is fill in the bubbles. And so it looks like sort of a standardized test. And that makes it a little more confusing visually, I think for the voter. Is that right?
Paul:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you. You and I have both seen those ballots and how they look like. It’s very easy to make a mistake and that happens quite a bit and that’s a huge problem. And I’m sure we’ll get into some of that. Every state has a different ballot and how it actually looks like. So it’s funny, you and I have the unique experience of Massachusetts and we know how Maine looks like, but for your listener, I don’t know what it’s going to look like in your state if they had ranked-choice because each ballot in every state looks a little differently.
Jennifer:
Right.
Paul:
And it could be visually confusing.
Jennifer:
Right. So the reason we’re talking about this is because just past election cycle, this system of voting was on the ballot in both Massachusetts and Alaska. And you and I are from Massachusetts and both spoke out, forcefully against the ballot initiative to switch to a ranked-choice system. And thankfully it failed, but in Alaska, it passed. So Alaska will join Maine as the second state in the country to use this system statewide. But maybe you can explain, I mean, it sounds like it’s a system that would give voters more choice. And who’s not in favor of choice? But you and I both know it’s more complicated than that. So maybe in addition to talking about how the ballots can be confusing, maybe you can explain how it actually creates some pretty odd results.
Paul:
Yeah, definitely. And in fact, in Alaska it barely won, but the ballet question included other provisions, believe it, or not. It included some quote, dark money provisions. It also got rid of partisan primaries. So it was like a bundled ballot question. And so ranked-choice wasn’t really at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds in Alaska. Some of those other provisions were.
Jennifer:
So, people thought maybe they were just voting generally for election reform without really drilling down on what ranked-choice would do.
Paul:
Exactly. Yeah.
Jennifer:
Interesting.
Paul:
And as a result, it passed and they still have to go through a legal review process to see if it’s constitutional in their state. Just like in Maine, I mean, Maine was debating ranked-choice for several years and they found it wasn’t constitutional in the state legislature. So now it’s just on the federal side. In Massachusetts, if it passed this November, you could argue, it could go before the state’s highest court to see if it’s constitutional as well. So this stuff is still kind of playing out in Alaska, but in Massachusetts it would have impacted every ballot.
Actually, every ballot, except for president and except for a local, we call it board of selected, but it would include the state legislature, the constitutional officers, like Sir Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and it would have included our federal candidates, Senator and Congress people. So, that’s a lot of elections would have been altered very quickly. And we spoke out against it, but it all started in 2018 in Massachusetts. And the first time I saw this effort started creep in, in Massachusetts was, believe it or not, at the Republican State GOP Convention. We had thousands of people there. All of a sudden you had these canvassers going around the convention, talking about ranked-choice voting. And I was scratching my head being like, “What is this?” This is a pretty well-funded organization this early out in 2018, talking about the elections in 2020. Now, mind you, this was before the 2018 election.
So, they were very well organized in Massachusetts, but you didn’t really hear much from their campaign for a while. Up until end of last year, it was almost December of last year where the Massachusetts Legislature had a hearing on ranked-choice. And it was some bills that were before the legislature. And again, these were bills that were a little bit different, but it was clearly dealing with ranked-choice voting. And we brought an expert to come and give testimony. It was a gentleman who was on the Federal Election Commission, appointed by Obama, confirmed by everyone in the United States Senate. So he’s well regarded on both sides of the aisle. And in his private practice, he litigated the case in Maine after the 2018 cycle, which was the first election for Maine.
And that was a funny situation where it was like the voters had already decided and he had to come up there and litigate it, which is very hard to do. And unfortunately he was unsuccessful, but he knew the issue very well. So he testified in front of the Massachusetts Legislature. And you could see these lawmakers started to understand this issue more. It was almost like the lights were going off like, “Oh, I get it now. Oh, this could be a problem.” And then we heard nothing about it up until this past summer whereby this point, the ranked-choice people in Massachusetts had two years underneath their belts, spending a lot of money after organizing. And there was absolutely no opposition in Massachusetts. So we decided to jump in because we’d already watched it in Maine. We offered some testimony at late 2019. I was personally very interested in this issue because I saw the problems associated unfolding in Maine and I didn’t want Massachusetts to be the next state to deal with this.
Jennifer:
So tell us about some of those problems, because I know that in Maine, it negatively impacted the Republican incumbent congressman, but it’s not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue really. There are people from both parties on both sides of this issue, but explain to us from the con side, from the anti-ranked-choice voting perspective, what the practical problems are with it?
Paul:
Well, absolutely. And I’ll talk to you about what do the proponents put their claims of the benefits are, and you can find some very, very narrow benefits. The biggest benefit they claim is that in a ranked-choice voting election, the winner will come out with a majority candidate… I mean the candidate who won, even though they didn’t get 50% of the vote the first time based off of their scheme, eventually they get a majority of the votes. And that is just utterly not true.
The only way ranked-choice voting works is by people voting and along the way their votes get discarded. If you don’t pick the right candidate, the last two that should be standing, your vote along the way gets discarded. And one of the best ways for people to kind of visually understand what that looks like is think of the presidential primary on the Democrat side. It was this time last year we had about 20 legitimate candidates running. No one could pick, no matter how smart you are, how well educated. Who would be the last two people standing? It was tough. And that’s the problem with ranked-choice, is they put that burden on you. So in order to find-
Jennifer:
So for example, if I’m a Democratic voter and let’s say we had ranked-choice voting here in the state during the primary, I would have gone in, and I would have had a list of candidates that included Biden, Warren, Klobuchar, Harris, all of these people. Some of them I might not know very much about. Some of them I might know a great deal about. And so I would rank the ones that I preferred in order, but then I would imagine that many voters would not rank all of them because some of the candidates would be either too distasteful to them. Or they would just say, “I don’t even know who this person is, so I’m not going to rank them at all.” And then those are the votes that ultimately get exhausted and discarded if you don’t fill out the entire sheet.
Paul:
Yeah. If you don’t fill out the entire sheet, there’s a more likelihood that your vote will get discarded along the way. But even if you vote and you don’t pick the right two people who are the last two people standing, that means you’re not voting in that final election. So really at the end of the day, when they do find a candidate through ranked-choice voting, they’re only decided because so many votes were discarded along the way. So you’re just lowering the amount of votes that are counted at the total in order to find what we call a state winner.
Jennifer:
Right. So the winner ends up with a majority, but it’s not a majority of all votes cast. It’s a majority of the votes that were counted only in the final round.
Paul:
Exactly. And that’s a little deceptive because if you hear the proponents, they make it sound like, “Oh, everyone had a shot,” but in reality, no, that’s not the case. In fact, there’s other voting systems out there, like just a regular old runoff system that I think works really well, where people do have that opportunity to go back and decide who they want to vote for, or if they want to vote at all on who the final two’s standing. But if you listen to any of the proponents of ranked-choice voting, they make it sound like everyone participated in this election and they found a candidate that everyone agrees with. And that’s just not true because again, go back to that presidential election or president for primary last year, so many candidates were strong in that election. And whoever were the last two standing, if you had picked them at the final round, great, your vote counted. If not, guess what, it didn’t, your vote was discarded along the way.
And like you said, Jen, there’s also con for you might go in the voting booth and you say, “You know what, there’s no way I’m going to vote for that person. Their positions are offensive.”
Jennifer:
Right.
Paul:
And you have that freedom under that system, not to vote for that person. But the problem is now you’re starting to take your likelihood of your vote to count out of the equation because you’re not selecting more candidates. You want to select as many candidates as possible. And then of course, there’s the whole gamesmanship of there’s certain ways to game a system so your vote can actually count in a more meaningful way. But that is the biggest benefit that the pro-ranked people claim is you pick a candidate who has a majority of the vote and that’s just utterly not true. It only works by discarding votes along the way. And then there’s also just voter confusion that we touched on.
But there’s two other big claims that the proponents make. We’ve heard them talk about it over and over again. One of them is that the political process now is so heated, it’s so visceral, it’s so partisan, that ranked-choice voting, if you believe the notion that everyone’s going to rank your candidates, that means the candidates have to be nicer to each other. It had a lot of curb appeal. I think that’s what you said at one point, especially in the 2020 election cycle, where it seemed pretty nasty at times. And that’s just not true either, even if you believe-
Jennifer:
Right. The idea is that you’re competing, not just for first choice votes, but for second choice votes. And so therefore you don’t want to trash the candidate that a voter might rank first because you want to make sure they put you second. But I know you’ve pointed out that that’s a little misleading as well.
Paul:
Yeah. They often say it kind of lifts up the dialogue. There’s less negative campaigning because you have to go and seek second and third place votes. And even for a second, if you believe that, let’s just say you’re a big proponent for ranked-choice and you’re like, “Yeah, I believe that.” Well, that doesn’t take into equation that there’s other entities out there in the political process that do come in and say negative things. Or at the very least contrast you. Super PACs, that’s what they’re there for. They’re independent voices who are there to elect or to seek candidates for office.
So, what you’re really doing, even if you believe in that philosophy is you’re just allowing someone else, another voice to come in. And I think it’s important for candidates to draw distinctions. I think it’s good when the two candidates are up there and they’re saying, “You know, this is my policy and this is the opponent’s policy,” and let them debate it out. Let them contrast each other. But even if you believe in this ranked-choice philosophy that everyone is supposed to hold hands and say, “We all are in agreement with everything,” that just means someone else is going to come in.
And in fact, that’s what happened in Maine. Maine has had now some elections under their belt under ranked-choice and they found that in 2018, there was, I think it’s equal or just under the amount of equal of negative Super PAC spending in the first ranked-choice election in 2018 than there was in ’16 and ’14 combined, which makes sense. You’re just saying these candidates shouldn’t be saying negative things against each other, but someone else is definitely going to do it. You’re not going to take that out. So ranked-choice would go around and say, negative campaigning will stop or diminish greatly. And that’s just not true. We’ve seen it. And if you just think it through, it also makes sense. It just means someone else is going to do that dirty work.
And then the last thing that they would constantly talk about is that it removes the spoiler effect. And this is where I think there are some situations where there’s very limited benefit. And the one that they used to always talk about is let’s just look at the famous election with Bush V Gore, where you had Ralph Nader in there. And he was a third party candidate, super liberal. And sometimes Democrats didn’t like Gore, so they voted for Nader. And it spoiled the election for Gore in Florida. And the same thing could be said about Ross Perot and George Bush versus Bill Clinton, that conservatives voted for Perot because Bush raised taxes and it spoiled the election for Bush and Clinton won.
And in certain circumstances I can kind of see some benefit where, if you’re a Republican, you may want to vote for a libertarian on your first vote, but then you’re going to vote for the Republican second vote, just like with Trump. There’s a lot of Republicans out there who didn’t like him a little bit. So maybe they would vote for a strong libertarian on the first ballot, but then they’d go back to vote for Trump on the second ballot, knowing that ultimately it’s election between Trump and Biden, that they want their vote to count.
So, I would acknowledge that, yes, sometimes there’s some very limited benefit, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t spoiler candidates in ranked-choice. There absolutely is. And going back right to Maine, Maine in 2018, had an incumbent Republican, Bruce Poliquin who got 49.5 or 49.8% of the vote on election night. He won with over 2,000 to 4,000 votes. I can’t quite remember. And he was facing a Democrat. He had two other independents. One of the independents was a pro-marijuana candidate. That’s all the person cared about. And the second independent was a anti-incumbent, anti-Republican. So that candidate, all they did was say, “Vote for me in your first ballot and vote for the Democrat in the second ballot. Whatever you do, don’t vote for the Republican.”
It was a fringe candidate or kind of a lunatic. But what ended up happening was that candidate spoiled that election. No one is really voting for that candidate because of their policies. But that candidate pulled out kind of fringe voters who ended up voting for the Democrat, the anti-incumbent in the second vote. And it spoiled that whole election. It wasn’t an election of ranked-choice where you had an independent coming in and their voice was heard and the platform was so strong. No, that wasn’t the case. Like the proponents would say that all these independent voices come in to the political process. There was a spoiler candidate. That’s what they were trying to do is knock out the Republican by playing a game in ranked-choice voting. And they successfully did that. That candidate was trying to do that again in 2020 against Susan Collins and that candidate couldn’t get enough signatures to spoil that election as well.
So, it’s another way of gamesmanship in the process with ranked-choice, it opens the door for more shenanigans. What I like to tell people is ranked-choice is very appealing if you’re a political activist. If you’re a hardcore to this stuff, you’re going to love it because this is a new way to play games, manipulate the system, get outcomes that normally other people can’t see it. But if you’re an everyday person who follow politics, but not super closely, maybe you have a job, you have a family, you have a career, whatever it may be, but you know enough where you go to vote and you know who you want to vote for, ranked-choice becomes confusing. Because like you say, Jen, all the time, the problem with ranked-choice, it forces you. And maybe in an ideal world, this would be great, but it forces you to try to rank all your candidates, which means you have to know all those candidates and their positions to make that decision to rank them.
Jennifer:
Right.
Paul:
A lot of people are not going to be able to do that. Maybe in an ideal world, if we’re all political activists, yes. But a lot of people, it becomes too much of a burden. And they wish they did, but they can’t.
Jennifer:
Right. I love how the supporters of ranked-choice will say, “Well, I trust the voters to educate themselves about all of the candidates.” And they act as though somehow we’re looking down on the voters. No, we’re not looking down on the voters. We just understand that most people are just trying to get through the day and they’re not political junkies like everybody, like you and I are. Even the most sophisticated voters, which I consider myself a pretty sophisticated voter might not have sufficient information about 15 candidates like we had in the Democratic primary last time it rolled around. So it’s just the reality, as you say. It’s not do we think voters should know more about the candidates or do we trust them to make educated decisions. The reality is most people will not have sufficient information on that many candidates.
Paul:
Yeah. And then that day you want to make the processes as easy and transparent. And one vote, one person typically has worked really well for a long time. Of course, it’s got some flaws here and there, but you don’t want to throw the whole thing out because of some shortcomings here and there. ranked-choice, like I said, always works really well for the political activists, but for the everyday person, it becomes a significant burden. And they always said, Jen, as you’ll recall during the election, that it’s like going to Dunkin’ Donuts and picking your coffee flavors, going to Baskin-Robbins picking your ice cream flavors. And they kind of laugh it off like, “Who doesn’t like ranking their strawberry vanilla coffee, Rocky Road, chocolate flavors.” But that’s under the assumption that you’ve already tasted all those flavors, that you know them pretty well, that those flavors aren’t going to change.
In politics, candidates change the positions a lot. And the voters for the most part, don’t have the time bandwidth to study each candidate and their positions. So ranked-choice becomes a burden on them when they go to vote. And even if you don’t believe me, even if you say, “Oh my gosh, I’m being so snotty in saying that,” go back to the Democrat primary a year ago. Can you name all 20 candidates? Can you name all their positions? I struggle. I follow this closely. The proponents of Massachusetts, we have a September primary. They had a primary where they had 10 Democrats running and the winner had 25% of the vote. And they showcase that as an example of why they need ranked-choice. And we’re debating this issue in October. And I said, can you name all those 10 candidates? And oftentimes the answer was no.
Jennifer:
Right.
Paul:
No one can, it’s a very hard burden. But that’s the problem. It puts that burden on you. And some of the political activists can, and kudos to them, but the everyday average voter can’t, and that’s what we’re asking them to do. And it’s a very hard burden. And then, Jen, of course there’s a whole transparency point of it, which oftentimes gets under-reported. But for big states or medium-sized states like Massachusetts, it’s a scary thing when you hear about how this is actually conducted. In Maine, it’s a small state, two congressional districts, small in the sense of population, big in the sense of landmass. But all the ballots get sent to one central location. They’re tabulated through a computer software system and the winner is dispersed several days later, if it’s a close election.
Jennifer:
Right.
Paul:
I like the process of you go to your town hall. The election results are posted on the wall that night. If it’s a close election, you call for a recount and human beings would go there and count them. I think that it has a nice aspect of transparency and accountability. Under ranked-choice, all the ballots are sent to one location. Somehow they’re supposed to keep separated if there’s any close elections on those ballots. And they’re tabulated through a computer software system where human beings do not understand how it happens. So I’m not trying to [crosstalk 00:26:34].
Jennifer:
Right. It’s basically constituting regular edition for a computerized algorithm, it’s algebraic formula. I mean, it’s adding a level of complexity that I think really will in the long run, lead to voter distrust of what’s happening behind the scenes.
Paul:
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
Jennifer:
And even if it’s totally on the up and up, and everything is done by the book and by the rules, you just don’t know because they’re not just adding up the ballots. It’s complicated. Most voters aren’t going to drill down on the math. And so they’re never going to really trust the outcome. And I think that is a very important point.
Paul:
Yeah. And also, it becomes complicated when you… Let’s just say there’s a ballot, you’re voting for governor’s race, a statewide position, and that’s not a close election, but let’s say in your ballot, you have a close legislative election. Well, remember your ballots will all go into one central location. They’re being tabulated there, but what happens if it’s a close election that’s on your ballot? How do they get recounted? How do they get separated? These are all questions a lot of times were never asked during the campaign. And then what’s the cost associated with getting these new machines? What’s the cost associated with trying to educate entire state population for how a new system works? And if you have multiple languages in your state, how do you educate these people?
These are questions that oftentimes the proponents want to overlook, but they’re valid questions because that’s the practical effects of this program. You’re going to have to re-educate an entire population, sometimes in multiple languages from a system they’ve been using for hundreds of years.
Jennifer:
Right. Right. So we’re coming to the end here and we have to kind of wrap it up. But I know that as we said at the beginning, that Alaska just passed this, Massachusetts just de-seeded it. New York City adopted fairly recently. It’s one of the more recent cities to adopt it. Where do you see this going in the future? And why should voters outside those regions be concerned?
Paul:
Well, it almost has no grassroots support. It’s being primarily funded through a very small handful of extremely wealthy individuals. So wherever those individuals want to go experiment, that’s why they picked Alaska, that’s why they picked Maine. Again, small population states that money goes afar away. So if you live in a state, you got to have your ears open to see if these groups are coming into your state to see if you’re a test tube for them. And if you find that they start having interest in your state, I would say, reach out to Mass Fiscal, reach out to other groups that have fought this. There is a loosely formed group of people who have been fighting this. Congressman Bruce Poliquin from Maine, the gentleman who lost his 2018 cycle, even though he had the most first place votes, he’s very public and he travels the country talking about this problem.
So, it’s very important for activists to be engaged, listen to what’s happening, follow it if it starts popping in your state, just like I did when I saw it at the Mass Republican Party Convention. I saw that they were there. I said, “Ha, this is happening here.” But you can defeat it as a conservative. And like I said, or like you said, it’s not a liberal, it’s not a conservative issue, it’s not a Republican, it’s not a Democrat issue. It’s a nonpartisan, non-ideological issue. And you’ll get a lot of supporters on your side who typically don’t maybe align with a conservative or moderate voice because there’s problems with this.
And in fact, a lot of well-known liberal Democrats who have experienced this and conservative Republicans who have experienced this in their districts have come out against it because the limited benefits do not weigh the significant cost associated with this program.
Jennifer:
Right. That is so true. And that is why progressive cities like Ann Arbor, Michigan and Burlington, Vermont, once they tried it for a little while, repealed it.
Paul:
Yeah. Even in our backyard, Worcester, Massachusetts, they had an election with ranked-choice where over 100 candidates came forward and they quickly repealed it after that.
Jennifer:
Wow. Yeah. I can see why. Well, thank you for joining us, Paul, and helping to break down this complicated issue. It’s very important that people know that this is lurking out there and know where they can go to fight it. And as you said, the website is massfiscal.org. And if you want to learn more about the Independent Women’s Law Center, you can look for us at iwf.org. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, you’re in control. I think, You Think, She Thinks.