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Date: 7/13/2021
EASTHAMPTON – During a public hearing on July 7, the Easthampton City Council officially added a new article to their city ordinances that will now allow ranked choice voting in certain instances during municipal elections.
For months, the city’s Ranked Choice Voting Committee – consisting of two city councilors, the city clerk and three registered voters – met to develop and eventually create specific parameters around ranked choice voting that pertain specifically to Easthampton, and what they can accomplish technology-wise during the tabulation process of each election.
There are several rules and regulations laid out in the finished document that allows residents to understand when ranked choice voting will be applicable, and how the counting process would be calculated with ranked choice voting taken into consideration.
In general, the document states that city municipal elections for mayor and for each precinct city councilor shall be determined by the ranked choice voting process when there are two or more qualified candidates listed on the ballot for that contest. Plurality voting – otherwise known as the voting system in which a candidate receiving the most votes is declared the winner, even if such candidate does not receive a majority of the votes cast in the election – will be used when fewer than two qualified candidates are listed on the ballot for that contest.
Another notable section in the new language states that the ballot should be designed in such a way that allows each voter to rank all qualified candidates and at least one write-in candidate. If the ballot design software, tabulation machines, or overall size and shape of the ballot prevents the voter from participating in ranked choice voting, then the city clerk will have sole authority to limit the ballot to no fewer than 10 rankings.
There is also other detailed information that explains ties, the tabulation process, exhausted ballots, ballot duplication, margins of victory, resolution of write-in votes, etc.
“This is not a particularly long ordinance; we tried to keep it brief,” said Dan Gilbert, the chair of the Ranked Choice Voting Committee, who added that they did write the ordinance with the current technology in mind but the ordinance is not software-specific, since software can change. “There were no major disagreements on the committee.”
According to Gilbert, the city will continue to receive first-choice votes at the end of election night, and those are unofficial results that are posted at the polls. Depending on what the city clerk decides, Easthampton will most likely be dealing with write-in votes the day after the election, according to Gilbert, as well as any ballots that are unreadable by the machine. Once that is done, the city can run a full tabulation and get results in about five to 10 seconds.
“Election results on election night are always unofficial results,” said Barbara LaBombard, Easthampton’s City Clerk. According to LaBombard, who is also a member of the Ranked Choice Committee, the machines will come back to her office after polls close, the city will take the memory cards out of the machines and run it through. According to LaBombard, it is very unlikely that many write-ins or ballot issues will affect the results of the election, but they will count those the day after anyway.
According to LaBombard, the city ran a test election on March 31 and worked very closely with Lynn Haas Services, an election services company, to make sure the tabulation process in Easthampton would work with ranked choice voting.
Thomas Peake, a city councilor and member of the Ranked Choice Voting Committee, told Reminder Publishing that he has been working on this in some capacity since 2018. Easthampton residents voted yes for ranked choice voting in the 2019 municipal election, and then the committee formed in early 2020 to begin working on the ordinance.
“We’ve been working on this for a while; just making sure our ordinance will align with the technology we have and it’s going to anticipate any of these edge cases that might come up,” said Peake. “At this point, I’m confident. I think it’s one of the better ranked choice voting ordinances that cities have.”
At this point in time, the city is only using the ranked choice voting ordinance for single-winner seats. At-large City Council elections and some School Committee elections will still use the old way of doing elections, according to Peake. The city will be eligible to use the ranked choice voting method in the 2021 municipal election, but only if there are contested races for single-seat positions. The option of ranked choice voting will be used for district councilor elections if there is a race.
“We’re certainly going to be doing a number of educational and outreach events that should help to make sure people have the information,” said Peake. The city will also be sending out a mailer that has instructions for what ranked choice voting will be like.
“The majority of people understand how to do ranked choice voting,” said Peake. “We’re going to be there to answer any questions that people may have, but at the end of the day, I actually don’t think ranking your options is that much more complicated than picking four at-large councilors, which is what we do now anyway.”
According to Gilbert, while not recommended, residents have an option called skipped ranking. This means that residents can pick their first preference, and then skip the second choice and mark the third or final choice. If someone skips a ranking, then the city will not consider lower rankings.
“We thought that was a better way of dealing with that particular circumstance,” said Gilbert, who added that, often, a person who skips rankings usually does it just to add a candidate they do not really like. Therefore, it does not make sense to consider the voter’s subsequent choice in that case.
The Ranked Choice Voting Committee will continue to meet leading up to the November election, and will find different ways to educate the public on the new ordinance.
A summary of all software configuration settings that have any potential to affect the results of any Ranked Choice Voting election, will be posted on the city website prior to the candidate filing deadline and will be posted at each polling location during voting.
A copy of the ordinance is included in the July 7 City Council agenda packet, which is available on the city’s website.