Bill > H809

This bill authorizes the town of Lexington to implement ranked choice voting (RCV) for five specific town offices starting January 1, 2025: moderator, select board, school committee, Lexington housing authority, and planning board. Under RCV, voters can rank candidates in order of preference instead of choosing just one candidate. The bill provides detailed rules for how votes will be counted in both single-seat and multi-seat elections, including provisions for eliminating last-place candidates and redistributing votes from eliminated candidates to voters' next preferred choices. In single-seat races, candidates are eliminated until one candidate wins a majority, while in multi-seat races, a complex mathematical threshold determines when candidates are elected. The bill includes specific definitions for terms like "batch elimination" and "transfer value" to guide the voting process. The Town Clerk is given discretion to publish administrative guidance about implementing the new voting system, and is required to publish detailed election results showing vote tabulations by round. The new voting system will not apply if there are two or fewer candidates for a single-seat office, or if the number of candidates is equal to or fewer than the number of seats to be filled.

Government Affairs

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H809