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Date: 6/26/2023
NORTHAMPTON — Three different bills involving major voting changes in Northampton are currently making their way through the state process.
During a hearing for the Joint Committee on Election Laws on June 21, Northampton Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, along with voting rights advocates from the city, testified in support of three bills, otherwise known as home rule petitions, filed and sponsored by state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa (D-Northampton) and state Sen. Jo Comerford (D-Northampton) including one that would lower the voting age for Northampton municipal elections to 16.
The other two bills, meanwhile, involve ranked choice voting in Northampton while the other one would allow resident non-citizens of Northampton the ability to vote in preliminary and city elections. All three involve making amendments to the city charter.
“As you can see, Northampton has a lot to say about voting,” Sabadosa said, during her testimony.
According to Sciarra, a Northampton Charter Review Committee conducted 19 public meetings since its inception in 2019 to talk about various election issues in the city including the ones that involve these bills.
Throughout this time, Sciarra said the three acts received overwhelming support from the Charter Review Committee and community members who were involved in the process of developing these new election changes.
“These bills have garnered substantial support from residents, local organizations, and elected officials alike,” Sciarra said. “[They] are crucial steps toward empowering voters, enhancing democratic processes, and ensuring fair and representative elections here in Northampton.”
For the bill that involves lowering the voter age to 16, Sciarra said that the city’s Youth Commission cited benefits including empowering youth, increasing voter turnout and encouraging civic engagement at a younger age as viable reasons for why this change should be made.
Specifically, the commission advocated for the right to vote for School Committee members since they are the ones who make the most important decisions for the school district.
This amendment to the city charter that would change the voting age was unanimously supported by the Northampton City Council and School Committee.
“Throughout the past few years, our city School Committee has made numerous decisions that have significantly impacted our schools and thus our lives,” said Noah Leaf, one of the interim co-chairs of the Northampton Youth Commission. “However, we’ve had no say in the makeup of our School Committee.”
Leaf added that many 16 and 17-year-olds are studying the workings of American democracy as well as past and present political issues in their history classes, meaning most students have a greater grasp of their own political consciousness.
“By allowing them to vote, we can give them a way to act on these newly-found conditions and the benefits of nurturing voters’ political development,” Leaf said.
Lila Nields-Duffy, the vice chair of the Youth Commission who testified for the same bill two years ago, said that people have been advocating for this bill for years, which has led to support from multiple organizations across the state including the ACLU of Massachusetts, the League of Woman Voters and U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern.
The search for support has not stopped though, according to Nields-Duffy, who added that the Youth Commission also spent time going to downtown Northampton on weekends to have conversations and collect hundreds of signatures.
“This is a change that makes sense to anyone interested in creating a more civically-engaged community,” Nields-Duffy said. “Young people are indisputably some of the most active members of our community.”
Last May, the Northampton City Council also supported an amendment to the charter that would allow for ranked choice voting in Northampton. The amendment would look to eliminate the current system of voting for one candidate for each seat and replace it with ranked choice voting for multi-seat elections — like City Council — and single-seat elections, like for mayor, where voters would have the option to rank their preferred candidates. Under the ranked-choice model, candidates would progressively be eliminated based on total votes until a winner is determined.
According to Sabadosa, if passed, the ranked-choice voting bill would not immediately allow the city to incorporate ranked-choice voting in their elections. Instead, the bill is a referendum, which means it will eventually ask Northampton voters to decide if they would like ranked-choice voting in their elections.
Despite Massachusetts voters rejecting the ranked-choice voting referendum in the 2020 election, it passed in Northampton with over 68 percent approval. According to Robert Boulrice, the chair of the Ranked Choice Voting Committee, which made recommendations to the City Council, feedback from Northampton residents was “overwhelmingly” positive during charter review regarding the proposed special legislation. The first draft of the legislation was modeled after that statewide referendum. The committee felt that if they started from a place where their act was modeled upon that which had already been approved by the state as a ballot question, then their chances of ultimately receiving approval from the commonwealth was likely.
“[Ranked choice voting] has the opportunity in the expression of how people vote for candidates to give a much clearer and closer representation of what the voters are saying,” said Boulrice. “We have established the software to work in such a way where all votes are counted, all votes are tallied, surplus votes are distributed, and when mistakes are made by the electorate, they are handled with as little intervention with human hands as possible.”
The Joint Committee on Election Laws provided a positive report of the home rule petition last year, and there is hope that it happens again this year so the ranked-choice petition can return to the city level.
“We would like the opportunity to have a municipal vote on it as part of the fall elections,” said Boulrice, during the Joint Committee hearing on June 21. “If we can do that, we’d be able to use ranked-choice voting in the general election next year.”