Can't vote for your favorite candidate because you'd be throwing your vote away? Tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils to avoid splitting votes? Ranked Choice Voting allows candidates to run without splitting votes, encourages candidates to run more positive campaigns, and ensures that the winners are elected with a true majority. Easthampton voters will have a chance to upgrade the way we vote for our Mayor and our district City Council members by voting YES on Questions 1 & 2 on Tuesday, November 5.
Most cities in Massachusetts hold preliminary elections, where the top two candidates advance to the general election. This ensures that one of them achieves a majority. Historically, Easthampton has not held preliminaries because they're expensive and often poorly attended. As a result, candidates are sometimes able to win without the support of most voters.
The Easthampton Charter Review Committee and City Council both voted unanimously to recommend using Ranked Choice Voting for our city elections. RCV achieves more representative results than preliminaries without any of the additional cost, allowing voters to attend one high-turnout general election and ensuring that the winner achieves a true majority of voter support.
You can rank as many or as few candidates as you want to! Mark only one candidate like you would under our current system, rank all of them, or just rank your top favorites.
If your first-choice candidate is unable to achieve a majority, your vote transfers to your second- choice, and so on, until someone achieves a majority and wins.
RCV is non-partisan and benefits you, the voter.
Ranked Choice Voting is non-partisan and does not benefit any particular ideology or political party over another. RCV benefits all voters by ensuring that their votes each have as much impact as possible. However, those who are opposed to the concept of representative democracy in general may not be supportive of RCV. Likewise, those who are invested in maintaining the current two-party system (in state and federal government) may also be opposed to its adoption.
Some people are initially opposed to RCV just because it seems like a big change. However, after learning more about RCV and its long history, many people across the political spectrum have come to appreciate how it can fix the major problems with our current voting system.
The Easthampton Republican Town Committee has expressed their opposition to the adoption of RCV. Please read this very long Facebook post for a complete rundown of their stated objections and our responses to them.
Chair — Thomas Peake
tom@easthamptonrcv.org
Treasurer — Daniel Gilbert
dan@easthamptonrcv.org