Clean Elections and Open Government

  • Public campaign financing should be enacted to end the current system of legalized bribery, in which businesses and organizations with interests in legislation fund the campaigns of officials who will serve them instead of the public. 

  • The Massachusetts Legislature should be made subject to the Public Meeting Law and the Public Record Law, which it imposes on other governmental bodies.

  • Instant runoff (ranked-choice) voting should be enacted to let voters express their real choices at the polls without concerns about "spoiling" the race for candidates they prefer over others.  This kind of voting also ensures that candidates are elected with the approval of a majority of the voters, as voters direct their votes to their preferred secondary candidates should their first choices fail to gather enough votes to win. The State of Maine passed ranked-choice.

  • We support a goal of increasing ballot access, so that all legislative races in Massachusetts are contested.  Most years, roughly two-thirds of legislators run unopposed, denying voters the ability to hold incumbents accountable at the polls.

 

 

 

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