Tanisha Sullivan of the NAACP supports Ballot Question 3 on the statewide ballot. But not because she believes it would have changed anything in her own political history.
Question 3 would change Massachusetts’ primary system, so instead of courting votes for a Democrat or Republican nomination, all candidates would be fighting for votes on one shared primary ballot. Then, only the top two vote-getters — regardless of their political affiliations — would advance to the general election.
Advocates who support and oppose this question all agree that more competition for office would be a good change. But some experts doubt that this reform is the right way to bring about that change.
Sullivan lost a Democratic primary for secretary of the commonwealth to incumbent Bill Galvin four years ago. And while it might seem like a primary system that rewards the top two vote-getters could have Sullivan her to the general election against her fellow Democrat, she’s not so sure.
“I don’t know that my experience would have been different but for perhaps more people running,” Sullivan said.
That’s one of the reasons she feels the NAACP Massachusetts conference has endorsed a “yes” vote on Question 3.
“I think that the system under Question 3 — all-party primaries — would encourage more people to run, full stop,” she said.
And that, she added, would be better for democracy.
Roughly three-quarters of incumbents in the Massachusetts Legislature will be unopposed in the upcoming general election.
“I believe that more candidates leads to better debates, better discussions,” Sullivan said. “I think more candidates in any race leads to greater accountability.”
Jordan Berg Powers, chair of the “No on 3” campaign, agrees that more candidates would be a good thing. But he said that’s not what would happen if Question 3 were to pass. He’s concerned that a lot of third-party choices would be eliminated if only the top two candidates make it to the general election ballot.
“This limits choice in a time when we should be having a more vibrant democracy and more choices, and we should be lowering the barriers for people to run for office, for voters to cast ballots,” he said. “Those should be the efforts that we should be spending our time on — is more democracy, not less democracy.”
And he believes there is a more democratic system than the so-called “jungle primaries” that Question 3 would usher in. His preference is ranked choice voting.
“Ranked choice voting is about choices,” Berg Powers said.
Voters in that system can vote for their top three candidates, ranked in order of preference. If that sounds familiar, it’s because voters have already considered it. The idea was defeated in a statewide ballot question four years ago. Berg Powers says he still wants to see ranked choice voting happen in Massachusetts, and he worries passing Question 3 would get in the way.
“Opponents and supporters seem to feel that there’s something fundamentally broken about Massachusetts politics,” political scientist Evan Horowitz of Tufts University said. “All they agree on is that it’s sick — but the diagnoses are totally different. They don’t actually agree on what condition it has.”
Horowitz said he wasn’t surprised Question 3 made it to this year’s ballot.
“What does surprise me is that people continue to believe that we can fix issues of competitiveness with procedural changes — that if we just get the procedures of the election right, then we will fix our politics,” he said.
Horowitz says changing to an all-party primary could shift some big match-ups from the primary to the general election. But in other states that have this system, he said, it hasn’t necessarily led to more people running for office.
“It’s not a great job, right?” he said. “So there’s a kind of lack of interest in being a state legislator. I think the solution to this is like a big push of candidate recruitment, not changing the way we count votes.”
“I am somebody who thinks that activists tend to overestimate the importance and the effects of voting reforms,” said Charles Stewart, the director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. “But having said that, I think that Massachusetts needs something to shake it up from the current electoral environment that it has.”
Stewart remembers a few years ago when he was advising a group that was doing a review of democracy here in Massachusetts, where most elections are won by Democrats.
“And I kind of shook up the group by saying I thought the most important thing to increase the quality of democracy in Massachusetts would be a revitalized Republican Party,” he said.
In Massachusetts, Stewart said, a more moderate GOP would be more likely to win elections.
Question 3 would reduce the power political parties have in choosing their candidates.
But despite issues of partisanship, Northeastern University political science professor Costas Panagopoulos says there are benefits to strong political parties. He pointed to the U.S. Senate election in Maine, and the Democratic Party’s ability to swiftly replace Graham Platner on the ballot after his campaign imploded.
“While it is a desirable goal to have more people contesting offices, it’s up to the parties to think about ways to engage in effective recruitment strategies that achieve this, and not necessarily relinquish some gatekeeping powers that they have in order to ensure that those individuals who appeal to the most voters advance,” Panagopoulos said.
There are a lot of problems with our democratic process, he added.
“Low participation levels, lack of meaningful competition, polarization in terms of the kinds of candidates that advance or make it to general election, you know, all sorts of legitimate concerns about our democratic process that should really inspire the kind of effort and attention that this particular proposal seeks to do,” he said. “And the question is, is this the best tool for solving it?”
On Election Day, that will be up to voters to decide.
