Lost his last three campaigns (Baker's lt gov against Patrick/Murray in 2010, Congress against John Tierney in 2012, Congress against Seth Moulton in 2014).
I always think back to the Phoenix's endorsement in the 2012 Tisei-Tierney race- that Tisei was basically a dream candidate for them against a guy whose family/ himself had likely committed crimes while in office- but the 'R' behind Tisei's name was too much for them
cybersecurity issues being told by the auto industry there were galling to me. (I was surprised to see that the TV ads required disclosure so you could tell it was all industry-funded: GM, Ford, Nissan, etc. That was some consumer-friendly goodness right there. When did that happen?) I bought my current old bomber from a dealership, but rely on a local independent auto mechanic for all my repairs, as I have always done.
A bit surprised Question 2 might prevail. I voted for it, but I figured most people would go, "Too complicated."
I see two things at play. First, there is the idea that the new voting system will be overly confusing and could theoretically lead strange results.
Second, and more importantly, there is the fear of change. Somehow (and remember, I was a yes voter) the yes campaign failed to prove that this was something needed. The default is the status quo. My rule of thumb is to vote no unless someone can convince me to vote yes. I'd say that before the campaign actually started, I would have voted no, because I saw the system working, but I was convinced that RCV could be a moderating force.
Imagine two polarizing candidates the state is split on and one third person nobody that really no one wants to vote but is the only other person on the ballot. Let's use Trump/Biden because it's an easy example.
I you're voting for Trump, Biden is probably your last pick and likewise for Biden voter. So your rankings look like this
Trump Voter :
1. Trump
2. Other Guy
3. Biden
Biden Voter:
1. Biden
2. Other Guy
3. Trump
If Trump and Biden split the votes and other guy gets just 1% you hit less than 50% majority for Biden and Trump but other guy got all the second place votes. We end up electing the other guy who nobody really wants who really only woukd have got 1% of the votes today. Is that better than what we have now?
That's at least my understanding of how it works and maybe I'm not exactly right which leads me to the second reason I voted No if I'm confused by it, then most likely many others will be too. I may not be the smartest person in the state but I'd put myself at least in the middle somewhere.
In this case, both Trump and Biden have just under 50% of the first-place votes. So, take the candidate with the fewest number of first place votes (Other), and for those ballots, look at their second-place votes, and assign them to either Trump or Biden accordingly. At this point, one of them will have more than 50%, and will be declared the winner.
(Unless there are equal numbers of "1 Other, 2 Trump, 3 Biden" and "1 Other, 2 Biden, 3 Trump", in which case, the usual tie-breakers are used. This is *exceedingly* unlikely in the real world).
All you need to know is that it allows you to rank your second choice. Why would that be anything but good?
But if you want to understand why your example is wrong, here's why: if no candidate gets 50% of the vote, then the candidate who received the LEAST 1st place votes is eliminated, and because she's been eliminated, the people who put her as their first choice are now voting with their second choice, (Biden or Trump). So you are not going to have "Some Other Guy" winning with RCV.
Yes, the majority of the electorate does not understand how RCV works. The problem with the Prop2 boosters was they tried to explain the workings to the electorate. (People are stupid!) They should have said, "who doesn't like to be able to express more preference?" and left it at that.
Referenda are a terrible idea. We pay salaries to have a government of informed representatives. They are too cowardly to move on good ideas and instead hide behind popular ill-informed votes.
From my understanding of RCV, the first candidate who would be eliminated would be Other Guy, since he'd have the least number of 1st choice votes. With him gone, the election falls to the last two, which isn't any different from what we have now.
I agree that RCV can be more elaborate, but I don't believe that should be a strong reason to reject it, especially since a voter can still do what they used to do and just vote for a single candidate.
But in my opinion the reasoning behind your question is why it lost.
Supporters tend to think, "Why would anyone be against this?", not understanding that a lot of folks can't be bothered to know what it's about.
The better question is, "What can we do to educate people about RCV so they can make a good decision?"
In my congressional district, where we had about 90 people(*) running in the Democratic primary for what's now Jake Auchincloss's seat, we had a lesson in how the votes get divided among candidates with similar positions, and we would likely have had a different outcome under RCV.
(*) - a slight exaggeration
Thus, we had enough voters thinking about that election that Question 2 did well in my town (I have not checked the district as a whole).
Because of the assumption that supporters challengers 3 and 4 would automatically list challengers 1 and 2 and so on so that challenger #2 (or 3) would win.
Then, I decided that people were taking a simplistic approach to the electorate, that perhaps supporters of challenger 1 would be less likely to vote for a challenger of a certain race, or that supporters of challenger 2 truly though the candidate was the best, but didn't really like challenger 1, so they would throw their support behind incumbent because though not as good as challenger 2, incumbent was decent enough.
That said, in the last Hyde Park primary, the winning candidate got a majority, but in both this primary and the one before, I could see having ranked preferences. Ranked preferences, though, do not portend a result.
RCV is inappropriate for a system where we elect individuals rather than parties. It is a way to take the worst parts of a parliamentary system and apply them to a representative republic.
I have enough trouble finding someone to vote for as it is. The problem with RCV is that many people like me won't rank anyone other than a first place. So as you decline in the numbers of voters who are actually being counted in the vote you will end up with a minority of the voters actually being counted, so the "majority" winner will have a less than majority of true number of voters, thereby being a "minority" (or actually a plurality) "winner". Everyone in favor of RCV assumes that voters will rank all candidates, but there is no requirement to do so. That's why in every race in the US where RCV has occurred, the winner won with less than 50% of the original vote total.
The people who supported this initiative in this election tried passing this off as a way to make the primary system "fair". But, those were all Democrats and since the party rather than the Commonwealth is in charge of the rules for their primaries they are free to use RCV in their primary systems. This initiative was a bald faced lie in how it was proposed and promoted. It should have lose and it did. But like every bad idea in Massachusetts it will come back and they won't lose again.
Exactly my question. Too many "why's" and "what's", and too few answers.
Why change?
What's wrong with a plurality?
What actual need is there to create a supposed majority?
Why engineer a virtual "runoff" that uses preference data from a larger set of choices instead of having an actual runoff between the actual choices?
What happens if a voter doesn't rank some of the included choices on their ballot?
In addition to constructing a majority by substituting later-round choices for eliminated choices (increasing the numbers for other candidates), does it also construct a majority by reducing sample size?
[For example - The four top finishers in a race (in descending order of total votes) are candidates A, B, C and D. If a voter ranked only C & D on their ranked-choice ballot - when C & D are eliminated, what happens? Do A (&B) benefit by now having a smaller set?]
Why only single-winner races? Why single-winner races at all? Some form of RCV might make sense for a multi-position race, such as choosing up to four city councillors-at-large.
They will get much further in future efforts by being honest. I am sick of big companies trying to lie to us, and mislead us.
I would like to see Question 2 fail. Ranked choice voting isn't something I have a problem with when voting. I do have a problem with the options regularly provided as candidates. They're mostly well connected, well funded, and are indebted to their largest donors and organizers. There have been zero times when I've seen a ballot and thought, "WOW! These are all great candidates!". I would like if a ballot initiative added an option to vote for 'none of the above'. Imagine this;
For U.S. President
Biden [D] ( )
Trump [R] ( )
Jorgensen [L] ( )
Hawkins [G] ( )
None of the above (X)
Much better. The top two are failures. The next two aren't even getting fair media coverage.
Just leave the spot blank if you really don't care. If None wins, they'd just appoint someone to the spot or hold another election. How is that any better?
If you want the 3rd party candidates to get more media, RCV is the way to achieve that since votes for them will actually matter.
By Thomson and Thompson on Wed, 11/04/2020 - 8:01am.
The ad suggesting that you will be raped if you vote for Question 1 has got to go down as one of the most serious misreads in campaign advertising history. Wish the opponents of Question 2 had run an ad like that.
I thought it was pretty funny when the No on 1 guy showed up here and tried to defend it, too. Yuck.
Question 2 had some mildly aggravating crap in the voter booklet about how we shouldn't do ranked choice because something happened somewhere in California and Gavin Newsome and Jerry Brown didn't like that.
Wut?
Maybe the Yes on 2 people should have run an ad with Newsom's ex screaming ;-)
Trusting that car makers are going to do the right thing about security on their own is laughable. What's worse is that we probably can't rely on automakers to keep the software systems of always-connected vehicles protected against security vulnerabilities for as long as most vehicles tend to stay on the road.
For what cars you can buy in this country is precisely why somebody should have voted Yes on 1. Telling a car company what they have to do goes against my Libertarian instincts, but if government won't let Peugeots and Tatas (tee hee) into this country for sale, then it's only fair that they intervene in the aftermarket repair trade.
I'm still whipping my 2006 Corolla. Not an AUX or a USB port to be found.
A real libertarian would argue that you should be able to anything you want with your car, including read all the data it records.
The auto manufactures are the ones who denying your right to use your car as you see fit. They are the ones who want to be the sole deciders of what you can and can't do with the thing you own. (And they want this control to make money, not to make anyone safer.)
You can also argue that a business generally has the right to make whatever product how they see fit and a customer can choose to buy it or not, barring serious commons externalities like pollution.
In this case, I voted for right to repair... but I don't think its extremely clear cut one way or the other. Technological integration also begets tradeoffs (see iPhone)
The best choice is usually obvious. Whenever big business throws a ton of money at a ballot question, it's prudent to vote against it. Whoever sends me the most mailings on expensive coated stock won't get my vote.
When you look at WBUR's town-by-town map for both President and US Senate, Billerica stands out as a bright red blotch surrounded by a sea of blue.
Sorting the tables by vote percentage shows that both Trump (63.2%) and O'Connor (61.7%) had their highest percentage of vote in Billerica, compared to every other Massachusetts city and town.
EDIT: A subsequent update to the WBUR map changed Billerica's status entirely, to light blue, for both races. I don't know what happened here.
O'Connor didn't come anywhere close to winning his home town of Dover, with 42.3%.
I read several articles plus a few news stations saying Trump insisted on them being counted AFTER yesterday's in person ballots were counted. We would be blue regardless so I think that's where that came in
Real bummed about ranked choice voting getting shot down. It's something that benefits voters regardless of which party they're affiliated with. Apparently "you people are too stupid to understand how this concept works" was a strong enough argument for enough people to vote no.
Instant Runoff Voting is absolutely better than our current plurality system, but it's also the worst of all the major ranked-ballot systems: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
I'm hoping that we'll get approval or STAR voting in a few cities and then people will feel comfortable with it at the state level.
I just hope it doesn't go the way of the Death with Dignity results back in 2012, where a lot of people wanted a "better" system to vote Yes on, but instead it just went away. There's a lot to be said for getting something in place and then improving it as needed.
Comments
I'm having quite the time!
Laughing at the slate of MassGOP losers getting their asses handed to them!
And yet Baker is as popular as ever
How is it that the MA GOP has competent governor candidates but can't seem to come up with more than a few other functional adults?
Has Trumpism damaged the party in MA beyond repair?
And what happened to Richard Tisei? He seems to have been pushed aside by the idealogues.
Tisei owns a North Shore real estate agency
Lost his last three campaigns (Baker's lt gov against Patrick/Murray in 2010, Congress against John Tierney in 2012, Congress against Seth Moulton in 2014).
I always think back to the
I always think back to the Phoenix's endorsement in the 2012 Tisei-Tierney race- that Tisei was basically a dream candidate for them against a guy whose family/ himself had likely committed crimes while in office- but the 'R' behind Tisei's name was too much for them
funny
Until you remember the last three speakers of the Mass House going back to 1991 all resigned due to indictments--all Democrats.
Around the time Joe Malone ran the lottery.
Good times.
Glad to see Question 1 winning. The egregious lies about the
cybersecurity issues being told by the auto industry there were galling to me. (I was surprised to see that the TV ads required disclosure so you could tell it was all industry-funded: GM, Ford, Nissan, etc. That was some consumer-friendly goodness right there. When did that happen?) I bought my current old bomber from a dealership, but rely on a local independent auto mechanic for all my repairs, as I have always done.
A bit surprised Question 2 might prevail. I voted for it, but I figured most people would go, "Too complicated."
Surprised about 2 too
Seems like a non-partisan no-brainer to me, but this is the US in 2020, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Can anyone who voted against 2 explain your reasoning?
Thanks.
I was a yes voter, but
I see two things at play. First, there is the idea that the new voting system will be overly confusing and could theoretically lead strange results.
Second, and more importantly, there is the fear of change. Somehow (and remember, I was a yes voter) the yes campaign failed to prove that this was something needed. The default is the status quo. My rule of thumb is to vote no unless someone can convince me to vote yes. I'd say that before the campaign actually started, I would have voted no, because I saw the system working, but I was convinced that RCV could be a moderating force.
Imagine two polarizing
Imagine two polarizing candidates the state is split on and one third person nobody that really no one wants to vote but is the only other person on the ballot. Let's use Trump/Biden because it's an easy example.
I you're voting for Trump, Biden is probably your last pick and likewise for Biden voter. So your rankings look like this
Trump Voter :
1. Trump
2. Other Guy
3. Biden
Biden Voter:
1. Biden
2. Other Guy
3. Trump
If Trump and Biden split the votes and other guy gets just 1% you hit less than 50% majority for Biden and Trump but other guy got all the second place votes. We end up electing the other guy who nobody really wants who really only woukd have got 1% of the votes today. Is that better than what we have now?
That's at least my understanding of how it works and maybe I'm not exactly right which leads me to the second reason I voted No if I'm confused by it, then most likely many others will be too. I may not be the smartest person in the state but I'd put myself at least in the middle somewhere.
That's not how it works.
In your scenario, let's say 1m people vote for
1 Trump, 2 Other, 3 Biden
and another 1m people vote for
1 Biden, 2 Other, 3 Trump
and a handful of people have either
1 Other, 2 Trump, 3 Biden
1 Other, 2 Biden, 3 Trump.
In this case, both Trump and Biden have just under 50% of the first-place votes. So, take the candidate with the fewest number of first place votes (Other), and for those ballots, look at their second-place votes, and assign them to either Trump or Biden accordingly. At this point, one of them will have more than 50%, and will be declared the winner.
(Unless there are equal numbers of "1 Other, 2 Trump, 3 Biden" and "1 Other, 2 Biden, 3 Trump", in which case, the usual tie-breakers are used. This is *exceedingly* unlikely in the real world).
God help us all
This is not at all how it works. (Face palm).
All you need to know is that it allows you to rank your second choice. Why would that be anything but good?
But if you want to understand why your example is wrong, here's why: if no candidate gets 50% of the vote, then the candidate who received the LEAST 1st place votes is eliminated, and because she's been eliminated, the people who put her as their first choice are now voting with their second choice, (Biden or Trump). So you are not going to have "Some Other Guy" winning with RCV.
Yes, the majority of the electorate does not understand how RCV works. The problem with the Prop2 boosters was they tried to explain the workings to the electorate. (People are stupid!) They should have said, "who doesn't like to be able to express more preference?" and left it at that.
Referenda are a terrible idea. We pay salaries to have a government of informed representatives. They are too cowardly to move on good ideas and instead hide behind popular ill-informed votes.
Is that right?
From my understanding of RCV, the first candidate who would be eliminated would be Other Guy, since he'd have the least number of 1st choice votes. With him gone, the election falls to the last two, which isn't any different from what we have now.
I agree that RCV can be more elaborate, but I don't believe that should be a strong reason to reject it, especially since a voter can still do what they used to do and just vote for a single candidate.
I also voted yes
I also voted yes on Question 2.
But in my opinion the reasoning behind your question is why it lost.
Supporters tend to think, "Why would anyone be against this?", not understanding that a lot of folks can't be bothered to know what it's about.
The better question is, "What can we do to educate people about RCV so they can make a good decision?"
In my congressional district, where we had about 90 people(*) running in the Democratic primary for what's now Jake Auchincloss's seat, we had a lesson in how the votes get divided among candidates with similar positions, and we would likely have had a different outcome under RCV.
(*) - a slight exaggeration
Thus, we had enough voters thinking about that election that Question 2 did well in my town (I have not checked the district as a whole).
I wanted it because just look
I wanted it because just look at the primary for the HP rep last time.
Incumbent - 35%
Challenger - 25%
Challenger - 25%
Challenger - 15%
Challenger -10%
And the incumbent wins but most people wanted him gone. This is why ranked choice voting was needed.
This is why I started opposed
Because of the assumption that supporters challengers 3 and 4 would automatically list challengers 1 and 2 and so on so that challenger #2 (or 3) would win.
Then, I decided that people were taking a simplistic approach to the electorate, that perhaps supporters of challenger 1 would be less likely to vote for a challenger of a certain race, or that supporters of challenger 2 truly though the candidate was the best, but didn't really like challenger 1, so they would throw their support behind incumbent because though not as good as challenger 2, incumbent was decent enough.
That said, in the last Hyde Park primary, the winning candidate got a majority, but in both this primary and the one before, I could see having ranked preferences. Ranked preferences, though, do not portend a result.
It is a bad idea
RCV is inappropriate for a system where we elect individuals rather than parties. It is a way to take the worst parts of a parliamentary system and apply them to a representative republic.
I have enough trouble finding someone to vote for as it is. The problem with RCV is that many people like me won't rank anyone other than a first place. So as you decline in the numbers of voters who are actually being counted in the vote you will end up with a minority of the voters actually being counted, so the "majority" winner will have a less than majority of true number of voters, thereby being a "minority" (or actually a plurality) "winner". Everyone in favor of RCV assumes that voters will rank all candidates, but there is no requirement to do so. That's why in every race in the US where RCV has occurred, the winner won with less than 50% of the original vote total.
The people who supported this initiative in this election tried passing this off as a way to make the primary system "fair". But, those were all Democrats and since the party rather than the Commonwealth is in charge of the rules for their primaries they are free to use RCV in their primary systems. This initiative was a bald faced lie in how it was proposed and promoted. It should have lose and it did. But like every bad idea in Massachusetts it will come back and they won't lose again.
I voted no on RCV.
I voted no on RCV.
Why?
Exactly my question. Too many "why's" and "what's", and too few answers.
Why change?
What's wrong with a plurality?
What actual need is there to create a supposed majority?
Why engineer a virtual "runoff" that uses preference data from a larger set of choices instead of having an actual runoff between the actual choices?
What happens if a voter doesn't rank some of the included choices on their ballot?
In addition to constructing a majority by substituting later-round choices for eliminated choices (increasing the numbers for other candidates), does it also construct a majority by reducing sample size?
[For example - The four top finishers in a race (in descending order of total votes) are candidates A, B, C and D. If a voter ranked only C & D on their ranked-choice ballot - when C & D are eliminated, what happens? Do A (&B) benefit by now having a smaller set?]
Why only single-winner races? Why single-winner races at all? Some form of RCV might make sense for a multi-position race, such as choosing up to four city councillors-at-large.
Question 1 opponents ran a sleazy campaign.
They will get much further in future efforts by being honest. I am sick of big companies trying to lie to us, and mislead us.
I would like to see Question 2 fail. Ranked choice voting isn't something I have a problem with when voting. I do have a problem with the options regularly provided as candidates. They're mostly well connected, well funded, and are indebted to their largest donors and organizers. There have been zero times when I've seen a ballot and thought, "WOW! These are all great candidates!". I would like if a ballot initiative added an option to vote for 'none of the above'. Imagine this;
For U.S. President
Biden [D] ( )
Trump [R] ( )
Jorgensen [L] ( )
Hawkins [G] ( )
None of the above (X)
Much better. The top two are failures. The next two aren't even getting fair media coverage.
I’d like rank choice with none of above included
As one of the options. For now I consider blank to be none.
I would like to see Question
...Then why did you want it to fail?
None of the above is stupid
Just leave the spot blank if you really don't care. If None wins, they'd just appoint someone to the spot or hold another election. How is that any better?
If you want the 3rd party candidates to get more media, RCV is the way to achieve that since votes for them will actually matter.
Question 2 isn't prevailing
Question 2 isn't prevailing though
Anyone who voted against 2
Can stay poor and stay stupid. Screw.
Well Alrighty Then
You sound stable and enlightened.
At least
I'm capable of voting in my interests.
Question 1 ad
The ad suggesting that you will be raped if you vote for Question 1 has got to go down as one of the most serious misreads in campaign advertising history. Wish the opponents of Question 2 had run an ad like that.
That was pretty gross
I thought it was pretty funny when the No on 1 guy showed up here and tried to defend it, too. Yuck.
Question 2 had some mildly aggravating crap in the voter booklet about how we shouldn't do ranked choice because something happened somewhere in California and Gavin Newsome and Jerry Brown didn't like that.
Wut?
Maybe the Yes on 2 people should have run an ad with Newsom's ex screaming ;-)
When Vlad and Sergei hack your car's computer system
and steer you into an eighteen-wheeler, don't come crying to me. :-)
news flash
news flash, with or without Question 1, this could still happen.
There was a Wired story about this five years ago
Yeah, it's Wired, but..
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/
Trusting that car makers are going to do the right thing about security on their own is laughable. What's worse is that we probably can't rely on automakers to keep the software systems of always-connected vehicles protected against security vulnerabilities for as long as most vehicles tend to stay on the road.
You mean Elon
But you have to engage the
cruise controlautopilot first.Like this guy plowing into an already overturned truck (nobody was killed, just a fun WTF to watch): https://www.thedrive.com/news/33789/autopilot-blamed-for-teslas-crash-in...
Or this guy, now eternally asleep at the wheel: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/16/18627766/tesla-autopilot-fatal-crash-...
Nice
I think the best part is how the Tesla would have run the guy on foot over if he didn't jump out of the way. Tesla Murderbot.
It's going to take time to
It's going to take time to get something as reliable as the M5 system.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memory-gamma/images/4/49/M5.jpg/revisi...
https://m0vie.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/tos-theultimatecomputer17.jpg
MotorHead.co guys
are crazy but fun to watch
Too Fast...
You do know that The Fate of the Furious is a fictional movie right?
That government limits options
For what cars you can buy in this country is precisely why somebody should have voted Yes on 1. Telling a car company what they have to do goes against my Libertarian instincts, but if government won't let Peugeots and Tatas (tee hee) into this country for sale, then it's only fair that they intervene in the aftermarket repair trade.
I'm still whipping my 2006 Corolla. Not an AUX or a USB port to be found.
Tatas and Peugeots could be sold here
They just have to meet our standards.
Migrate to Canada with a US car and you have to modify it, too, because they have standards for winterization and different emissions requirements.
Libertarian
A real libertarian would argue that you should be able to anything you want with your car, including read all the data it records.
The auto manufactures are the ones who denying your right to use your car as you see fit. They are the ones who want to be the sole deciders of what you can and can't do with the thing you own. (And they want this control to make money, not to make anyone safer.)
Kind of but not necessarily
You can also argue that a business generally has the right to make whatever product how they see fit and a customer can choose to buy it or not, barring serious commons externalities like pollution.
In this case, I voted for right to repair... but I don't think its extremely clear cut one way or the other. Technological integration also begets tradeoffs (see iPhone)
But mostly there are no true Scottsmen :)
With Ballot Questions
The best choice is usually obvious. Whenever big business throws a ton of money at a ballot question, it's prudent to vote against it. Whoever sends me the most mailings on expensive coated stock won't get my vote.
Amazing stat on question 2
The pro-RCV campaign raised $9.8M and lost by 10 to a group that raised just over $3500.
https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Question_2,_Ranked-Choice_Voting_I...(2020)
Ooooh Weeeee
So what happened to the alleged blue wave? Looks like bad man orange is going to pull this off!
No, not really
But thanks for living the stereotype of "math impaired Trump voter" and "instant gratification driven Trump voter who fails the marshmallow test".
We needed someone for that role here.
Besides - didn't you hear? Vermin Supreme declared victory at 2pm so HE WAS FIRST! Must be true - get ready for that pony!
Nananana Boo boo
Resorting to name calling is beneath me.
Suuuure it is
Cupcake, name calling is what you just did, and it's all you got.
Show yourself out and take Orange Man with you.
Vermin Supreme
Is really his name. How is that name calling?
Not sure where I'dput the pony though?
No senate for you!
So much for that blue wave.
Are all you Republicans premature?
Keep an eye on Georgia, bright boy.
What's with Billerica?
When you look at WBUR's town-by-town map for both President and US Senate,
Billerica stands out as a bright red blotch surrounded by a sea of blue.Sorting the tables by vote percentage shows that both Trump (63.2%) and O'Connor (61.7%) had their highest percentage of vote in Billerica, compared to every other Massachusetts city and town.EDIT: A subsequent update to the WBUR map changed Billerica's status entirely, to light blue, for both races. I don't know what happened here.
O'Connor didn't come anywhere close to winning his home town of Dover, with 42.3%.
Well, that's convenient
Now we know where to build the wall.
There is hope for Rica
2016 had Billerica a solid red town as well as Tewksbury and Wilmington. Good to see those 3 towns flip to blue.
Apologies to Billerica
Within an hour after I posted this, WBUR's map and table changed to show Billerica as light blue in both the Presidential and Senate races.
I don't understand what happened here, as I'm pretty sure the original data were listed with 100% precincts reported.
Mail Ins I think...
I read several articles plus a few news stations saying Trump insisted on them being counted AFTER yesterday's in person ballots were counted. We would be blue regardless so I think that's where that came in
In Massachusetts or at least
In Massachusetts or at least Boston, I know personally, absentee ballots are counted at the precinct the voter is from with all the other votes.
Real bummed about ranked
Real bummed about ranked choice voting getting shot down. It's something that benefits voters regardless of which party they're affiliated with. Apparently "you people are too stupid to understand how this concept works" was a strong enough argument for enough people to vote no.
I feel mixed
Instant Runoff Voting is absolutely better than our current plurality system, but it's also the worst of all the major ranked-ballot systems: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
I'm hoping that we'll get approval or STAR voting in a few cities and then people will feel comfortable with it at the state level.
I just hope it doesn't go the
I just hope it doesn't go the way of the Death with Dignity results back in 2012, where a lot of people wanted a "better" system to vote Yes on, but instead it just went away. There's a lot to be said for getting something in place and then improving it as needed.
The holy trinity
Of awful ballot defeats in MA consists of that, beer at the grocery store, and RCV.
I'm glad I didn't grow up in this state, and I'm glad that I get to have a Boston address. People everywhere else sound like such dumb trash to me.
Everybody remember to wave to
Everybody remember to wave to Shiva as he is driving around picking up his signs so he can re-use them next round!