MassLive.com - Tim Cahill's Campaign Departures Make the Case for Instant Run-Off Voting

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By S.P. Sullivan

Jill Stein, Green-Rainbow candidate for governor, says Tim Cahill's campaign departures make the case for instant run-off voting.

Green-Rainbow candidate for governor Jill Stein took advantage of the today's surprise news that independent candidate for lieutenant governor Paul Loscocco endorsed Republican Charles Baker to make the case for an alternative voting method.

Responding to Loscocco's announcement this morning that he was leaving running mate Tim Cahill to endorse Baker, Stein said the focus was in the wrong place.

"The truth is there is a voting reform that gets rid of the problem that voting for the candidate you truly support might have unintended consequences - like helping a candidate you don't like," Stein said in a statement.

Stein, whose campaign was hit hard bynarrowly missing the benchmark to qualify for matching funds from the Commonwealth earlier this week, made the case for instant run-off voting, also known as ranked choice.

Instant run-off voting allows voters to rank their choices for a political office, rather than choose one. If no candidate receives a full majority, the candidate with the least votes bumped out of the race, distributing their supporters' second choices among the other candidates. It's called instant run-off because voters make their second choice in advance, avoiding the need for expensive run-off elections.

Both Loscocco and senior Cahill adviser John Weaver said they could no longer support Cahill because they thought doing so would give the election to incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick.

"It's just recognizing the reality that it's just not going to happen for Tim and continuing on would have only help Patrick and hurt Baker," Weaver told the Associated Press. Cahill has been seen as having little chance of winning the race for governor, but had been pulling as much as 14 percent in some polls, including 11 percent of likely voters in a recent Boston Globe poll.

Baker and Patrick, meanwhile, were in a statistical tie, at 34 and 35 percent, respectively, giving rise to the age-old spoiler question.

Voter Choice MA, a group advocating ranked choice in the Commonwealth, claims that Massachusetts has fewest number of competitive elections in the nation. They say instant run-off ballots would diversify Massachusetts politics.

In an interview with WFCR's Fred Bever earlier this year, Stein also made the case for the alternative voting method:

Jill Stein: Why haven't we gotten it? We actually workedc for progressive legislators eight years ago when I ran for the first time and ensured that the bill was there well in advance of the elections so that it could be enacted, if there was concern about unintended consequences with the vote, well hey, let's get a voting system that prevents unintended consequences.

Fred Bever: So in that I could say, "I want Jill Stein to be governor, but my secondd choice is Deval Patrick if she doesn't get a majority."

Stein: Exactly.

Fred Bever: So that's a good solution down the road, but that's not an answer for right now.

Stein: And you know what? We're not going to get that by asking nicely.

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