If you’re upset with the status quo of Massachusetts politics, voting yes on Question 3 might feel good. It offers what seems like a simple fix for a system that feels unresponsive and unhelpful. I agree with much of what Question 3’s proponents say is wrong with the MA state government and electoral system.

Despite that, I strongly urge you to vote against it. Their solution is even worse than what we already have.

The problem is rooted in a few things: our current voting system, the cost of running a political campaign (and the advantage of having lots of cash), and our campaign finance laws.

Running a political campaign is expensive. Voter outreach and the advertising necessary to get name recognition for your race is expensive. Wealthy people, or people who curry favor with wealthy donors and super PACs (or better yet, wealthy people who curry favor with wealthy donors and super PACs) are in a much better position to get the word out about their candidacy, and thereby get votes. But no matter how big a problem the money is, and how much it skews our current political environment—which is a lot, by the way—our voting system remains a large enough problem that Question 3 will fix nothing. Actually, Question 3 will only make things worse.

I’ll give you some examples.

First, here’s why Question 3’s supporters think you should vote for their proposal.

Question 3’s supporters say that it would make elections more competitive, force lawmakers to listen to voters, and make lawmakers more accountable. They complain that lawmakers are currently unresponsive to voters’ concerns and demands (which seems true, especially around auditing and transparency), and that those lawmakers are too complacent because they are able to run without serious opposition. They argue that, by opening up primaries to everyone and only letting the top two vote-earners in the primary advance to the general election, Question 3 would force lawmakers to fulfill their constituents’ requests (because otherwise they’d be voted out, presumably).

As I said above, I agree with some of their complaints. I just think their solution is ass-backwards.

Here’s the voting-system part of the problem: here in MA (like in most of the US) we use what is called ”first-past-the-post” to determine the winner of an election. In this kind of system, the candidate that gets the most votes wins… and that’s it. This is how we handle national elections too.

This system can work if you only have two candidates. Let’s say we’re talking about a race for MA State Senate; when State Rep Amesville is up against Mayor Barkley, you either vote for Amesville (who is very liberal) or you vote for Barkley (who is only moderately liberal). One candidate will get more votes (barring a tie), and boom, you have your winner.

What if you don’t care enough about either option—maybe because you’re conservative enough that you don’t see a difference between Amesville and Barkley—and don’t vote at all? Then the state has lower election turnout, the election isn’t properly representative of voters’ preferences, and trust in our government erodes. That’s another problem.

But what if you have three candidates: Amesville, Barkley, and Carmichael? Now you can have one candidate win with less than half of the voters voting for them. Remember, Amesville is very liberal and Barkley is moderately liberal. Successful businesswoman Carmichael, though, is staunchly conservative. Amesville takes home 34% of the vote, Barkley gets 31%, and Carmichael wins with 35%.

With our first-past-the-post system, Carmichael is the victor even though 65% of the voters chose someone more liberal than her. That’s our current system working as designed. I don’t like it.

Note: 37.3% is the highest percentage of votes in a free election the Nazi party ever won before they successfully dismantled German democracy. They actually lost votes in the next election before they managed to seize power, only earning 33.1%. Germany (the Weimar Republic) had a different political system than we do, but I think you understand the issue I’m raising.

It gets even worse when you introduce more candidates! If you add a fourth, like Commissioner Deng over here, now you can have a winner with only 26% of the vote. With every additional candidate you add, the winning share required gets smaller and smaller. It doesn’t matter whether that candidate is fringe or weird or awful—if ten candidates run and they’re all neck and neck, you just need 11% of the vote.

But Henry, you say, that’s why you let the two most popular candidates advance to the general election! Then the first-past-the-post system works and people choose from two candidates!

That’s not a solution. That just moves the problem to the primaries.

If six people run in the primary and the top two vote-earners get 15% and 14%, there’s no guarantee that either of them are actually who the majority of voters would want. Together they’d represent 29% of the voting populace. I’ll just remind you of my above point about the last free elections in the Weimar Republic.

Also, I’m mentioning the Weimar Republic and Nazis because they’re extremely evocative and illustrate my point neatly, but my argument stands without them involved. You don’t need Nazis running in your election to know that a competition between two candidates who (combined!) only drew 29% of voters isn’t going to be representative of the electorate’s interests.

We already have parts of MA where only the Democratic party bothers to run a candidate because the Republicans know they won’t get a majority of the votes. It’s an understandable and maybe even smart choice for the Republicans (or any other independents), but isn’t good for people’s trust in government. This dynamic produces the uncompetitive elections that Question 3 supporters complain about, where the only election that matters is the Democratic primary.

Unfortunately, opening up the primaries doesn’t solve this. Opening up the primaries just offers a new election where a few very small but disciplined (or marketed-to) groups can render the general election a farce.

Worse, because with more candidates there’s a lower threshold to advance to the general election, having more candidates makes being able to spend lots of money to advertise ahead of the open primary even more powerful. You don’t need your ads to convince half the voters to support you, you only need to convince 15% or 11% or maybe even 9% that you’re a decent pick. The required total gets smaller the more candidates there are. That’s the problem.

Hell, maybe if you’re super wealthy or well-funded you even spend some of your money to support someone else that you think you can beat. That kind of bullshit is already happening in American politics. Having more cash to burn makes a huge difference.

If you think that there wouldn’t be that many candidates in a primary, consider this: there were five candidates in the Democratic primary for the MA State Senate 2^nd Middlesex District. That’s five people hoping that they’ll be the one to represent one party in one seat. Why would we expect there would be any fewer in a primary with no party connection, where anyone can run?

The actual solution, the one that Question 3 doesn’t offer, is to change our voting system away from first-past-the-post. There are multiple alternative options. These include Instant-runoff Voting (sometimes called “ranked choice voting”), Approval Voting, and STAR Voting. Adopting any of those for a general election would do a better job of solving the issues that Question 3’s supporters complain about. While MA failed to pass ranked choice voting back in 2020, it would be worth trying again.

Please, vote no on Question 3.