Boston is inching closer to having ranked choice voting in local elections.
The push, led by At-Large City Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune, comes nearly five years after voters across the commonwealth rejected the idea for state and federal elections.
“Ranked choice voting is how we make sure that whoever’s elected is supported by the majority of the electorate,” Louijeune said.
She noted that under the current system, known as the plurality system, a crowded field can result in no single candidate garnering more than 50% of the vote.
“Sometimes, you get people winning and they only get 30% of the vote, but that’s not who the majority of the electorate wanted,” she said.
To solve that, Louijeune is preparing a proposal that would shift Boston to a system that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. In this system, each voter’s top pick is counted, and the candidate with the smallest share of those first-preference votes is eliminated. Voters whose first choice is eliminated will then have their votes tallied for their second choice, and the process continues for subsequent preference choices until a candidate reaches 51% of the vote.
Under her still-developing proposal, Boston preliminary elections would remain in place. The preliminary contests for mayor and district city councilor would advance four candidates instead of just two to the general election. The contest for at-large city councilor would remain largely the same, with eight candidates advancing from the preliminary. Voters in the general election would then rank their preferences, and candidates who reach the threshold of 20% win.
After approval from Boston City Council and Mayor Michelle Wu, the measure would need the Legislature’s and the governor’s approval to be placed before voters on a Boston ballot.
“I think it’s always the right time to be working on democratic reform and how we improve our democracy,” Louijeune said when asked “why now” for ranked choice.
Many in Boston would seem to agree. While voters statewide rejected the 2020 ballot question on ranked choice, more than 60% of voters in Boston supported it.
Ranked choice is rising as a political issue atop local and state ballots across the country. Voters in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon recently rejected ranked choice voting systems for state and federal elections. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 11 states have banned ranked choice voting systems, while nine states allow it at the local, state or federal level.
Closer to home, the system is used in Cambridge.
But, the ranked choice movement is not without critics.
Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, the conservative-leaning good-governance watchdog organization, led the opposition campaign against the 2020 referendum and is opposed to Boston changing to a system it says would force voters to make a difficult adjustment.
“You want elections to be clear and fair and not too confusing,” said Paul Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.
Craney argues that along with being hard to tally and potentially undermining voters’ confidence in the results, advocates’ frequently used analogy of ranked choice voting being like picking your favorite ice cream from the store doesn’t exactly fit since it’s based on an assumption that the person is familiar with most of the options they’re ranking.
“Under ranked choice, you’re putting that burden on average voters to go do their homework, their research on all the candidates so that they could have, like the ice cream analogy, an understanding of the flavors of the ice cream,” Craney said. “That’s a big burden to put on people, especially when you start talking about crowded elections in every election.”
The move to ranked choice does come with complications.
Jack Santucci, a political science lecturer at the George Washington University, said emerging research suggests changing to ranked choice typically means 5% of ballots are considered invalid because of voter errors, possibly due to confusion.
“I think every person needs to ask themselves whether that is a price they’re willing to pay or impose on others in return for whatever benefits they think this system is going to yield,” he told GBH News.
Santucci said ranked choice has been in place since 1919 in Australia, where ranking candidates is required to make a ballot valid.
“I don’t think that this is an absolute disaster or nightmare for American democracy,” he said. “You see it gets adopted in a bunch of cities. I do worry about the confusion aspect of it.”
Louijeune says her measure would allow voters to rank as few or as many candidates as they choose. She and other advocates do acknowledge the shift to a ranked choice election system would change the way election workers do their jobs.
“Being somebody who used to serve on the board of elections for the city of Boston and had a very up-front look at how the department works and their professionalism, I have no doubt in my mind that they could get this done,” said Edwin Shoemaker, executive director of the nonprofit Voter Choice Massachusetts.
“Every election we have to hire and train over 3,000 poll workers,” he added. “It is something that they undertake with the seriousness that it deserves and something that they execute in election after election and I don’t think switching the ranked choice voting would change that.”
Voting machines and software would also need to be updated.
Last year, during a hearing on the idea, election officials said a new voting system is already an imminent expense given that voting machines purchased in 2019 will near the end of their useful life in about five to seven years. A new system would cost about $2 million, they said.
The push for ranked choice voting in Boston may be complicated by the city coming under the oversight of a yet-to-be-announced receiver until at least 2026.
In a recent report, Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin said he would take the step after Boston election officials failed to provide enough ballots for voters in several precincts, causing some to lose out on their right to vote.
That situation may dissuade Beacon Hill from clearing the way for Boston to consider ranked choice until the city can demonstrate it can smoothly run elections.
Louijeune said Galvin’s move reflects the need for Boston to update its current election infrastructure, communication systems and poll worker training.
“Ranked choice voting wouldn’t change how many ballots are needed at each polling place; it simply alters how ballots are counted after they’re cast,” she told GBH News. “As Boston upgrades its operations, I am confident that all future Boston elections — whether our current first-past-the-post style or RCV — will be run in a way that instills confidence in our democracy.”
The next working session on Boston’s ranked choice legislation is scheduled for next month.
