Emerson students are filmmakers, writers, artists, journalists, performers, storytellers, activists—and often more than one of those. We are opinionated and overcommitted. You can’t sum up Emerson students or their opinions by checking one box or another—in the classroom or at the polls.
The two-party system is outdated and doesn’t serve us as multidimensional voters. We need an overhaul of our electoral system—ranked choice voting is a reform that will help us get there.
In the current system, upon casting your ballot, you demonstrate support for one candidate. With ranked choice voting, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. Through this system, voters are able to rank all the candidates, but are not required to. This permits voters to fully express their preferences, without fears of contributing to a spoiler candidate—when a less popular candidate pulls votes away from a front-runner candidate, allowing a candidate that the majority of voters do not support to win.
Ranked choice voting gives third-party and long-shot candidates a better chance and results in elected officials that are more diverse and more representative of the voters. Under our current system, candidates in some places are able to win their seats year over year by relying on a minority of the vote. Under these circumstances the elected official only has to keep this minority appeased with new policies. Because ranked choice voting requires that candidates have majority support to win a seat, elected officials are accountable to a wider body of constituents. This system also incentivizes positive campaigning, resulting in less polarization—something in excess at the moment.
Ranked choice voting is not new, it’s actually widely used in jurisdictions across the country and by major organizations. Maine; Alaska; New York City; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Arlington, Virginia, are among the 51 jurisdictions that use ranked choice voting, comprising a total of 14 million voters. During the 2024 election cycle, 73% of voters in Washington, D.C., voted to implement ranked choice voting, and Alaskans voted to defend their ability to use this system.
Everyday entertainment organizations use ranked choice voting to democratize different processes: The Academy uses it to pick Oscar nominations, sports organizations like the NFL, WNBA, and NHL use it to decide the winners of their major awards.
Critics claim ranked choice voting is confusing for voters, but I think this discounts their intelligence. Perhaps looking at an unfamiliar ranked choice voting ballot for the first time is confusing, but exit polls demonstrate that voters overwhelmingly understand ranked choice voting ballots, even after just one time using them. In 2022, 85% of Alaskan voters reported that ranked choice voting was “simple” in their first election using this method. Additionally, 95% of voters across every ethnic group in the New York City 2021 primary elections found the ballot “simple to complete.”
Emerson students’ affinity towards progress and our creative nature positions us as a group of young people who can use our passions to achieve change in our country. There are movements for ranked choice voting in nearly every state across the country, and the national organization, Rank the Vote, is a great place to get started.
In the past year, I have had the chance to work with Ranked Choice Boston, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization working to implement ranked choice voting in Boston municipal elections. The ordinance is currently undergoing working sessions at the City Council and will be voted on at an upcoming meeting.
For more information about the process and events focusing on local democracy in Boston, follow @rankedchoiceboston on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn—or sign the petition at rankedchoiceboston.org, even if you aren’t registered to vote in Boston.