Support Ballot Question 3, and Ranked-Choice Voting, Too

This November, Question 3 on the Massachusetts ballot will ask voters to abolish partisan primaries in favor of a single, all-party primary in which the top two candidates advance to the general election.

But looking to states that have already implemented this policy, significant concerns arise. Parties and factions may be incentivized to field fewer candidates to consolidate support, disadvantaging smaller candidates. Such a phenomenon would place outsized importance on prior name recognition and preexisting campaign war chests.

I argue these concerns would be offset by reexamining ranked-choice voting, a policy Massachusetts voters rejected in 2020. By implementing Question 3 alongside instant-runoff ranked-choice voting, Massachusetts will see a welcome rise in competitive elections while avoiding the pitfalls of split support.

There are considerable benefits to a single-party primary, especially in Massachusetts. The Bay State is notoriously bereft of competitive elections, with only 40 percent of state House and Senate races contested this November. In effect, Democratic primaries decide who gets elected.

Primaries face lower turnout than general elections. By forcing candidates challenged in a primary to also run in a de facto general election before a wider constituency, as this ballot question suggests, Massachusetts would likely see increased accountability and action from candidates who are unthreatened under the status quo. This change will increase both engagement in the democratic process and officials’ accountability to constituents — certainly goals worth pursuing.

But Question 3 will not come without tradeoffs, and recent history makes this clear. Earlier this year, California, one of the states with this policy currently in place, held its primary for governor. After former Vice President Kamala Harris decided not to run, the Democratic field was wide open, with a slew of candidates struggling for months to consolidate a strong base of support.

On the Republican side, though, only two serious contenders emerged — Fox News contributor Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. The thoroughly dispersed pool of Democratic support in this single-primary model led to a series of troubling polls — in March and April, several polls showed Hilton and Bianco leading the pack with (usually) less than a third of total support.

Thankfully, this result did not come to pass. Democrat Xavier Becerra, a stalwart figure of California politics, eventually pulled ahead in the race. But if the primary had been held a few months earlier, deep-blue California could have accidentally elected a Republican governor, likely leading to a costly and avoidable recall election.

Such a misrepresentation is not inconceivable in Massachusetts. In recent years, California and Massachusetts have voted Democrat by relatively similar margins. For one party to win a statewide election essentially on a technicality is concerning enough — we should hope our electoral systems accurately reflect popular will. But this possible result also reflects more fundamental issues with a single-primary system.

For a time, California Republicans gained a tremendous advantage by having a smaller field of candidates in the primary. If support is condensed in one party and dispersed in another, the dispersed party has an incentive to run fewer candidates. Smaller-profile candidates may be pressured to drop out to avoid splitting similar bases of support, and a vote for a smaller candidate (as often happens in general elections) may be characterized as “throwing away” one’s vote.

We should strive for an electoral system in which voters can choose freely and with a clean conscience.

With ranked-choice voting, voters need not worry that supporting a candidate with a lower polling average will take away crucial support from a more prominent candidate who may also align with their interests. Furthermore, the implicit advantage of being the “realistic option” for candidates with name recognition, cash on hand, and higher polling averages would dissipate.

Uncontested elections are an issue in Massachusetts politics that must be addressed — for that reason, I advise voting “yes” on Question 3. But like any policy, single-party primaries come with tradeoffs. Voters and activists cannot dust off their hands and move on should Question 3 pass.

More work is needed to fully realize the ideal of free and fair elections. Adopting ranked-choice voting ought to be high on the list.

Adam N. Chiocco ’27, an Associate Editorial Editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Pforzheimer House.