Interest in election reform seems to have spiked recently around here in the wake of two significant developments, Maine’s first election cycle with ranked choice voting and the enactment of automatic voter registration in Massachusetts. The ability of our northern neighbors to enact ranked choice voting, (a more ambitious electoral reform than automatic voter registration to be sure) has many Bay Staters asking why we are behind the curve. The answer to this vexing question lies in the differences between the governing institutions and popular perceptions of politics at play in Maine and Massachusetts.
Institutions
Electoral reform efforts have been more successful in Maine, in part, because Maine’s state legislature is less professionalized than the Massachusetts legislature. Maine state legislators are part-timers, while Bay State legislators are full-timer’s whose salaries, staffs, and campaign coffers are considerably larger than their Maine counterparts. Electoral reforms, such as term limits, public financing of campaigns, and ranked choice voting, promise voters more competition and choice at the ballot box. Since full-time legislators are more likely than part-time legislators to be career politicians and therefore to be more personally threatened by increasing the competitiveness of elections, it should be no surprise that Massachusetts state legislators have been less receptive to these types of reforms than have Maine state legislators, where the personal stakes of election and re-election are lower and institutional resources are fewer. This doesn’t mean that Maine has no “career politicians,” but it does help us to understand why Beacon Hill pols have more motivation and capacity to resist reform.
Even in Maine election reforms have required the public’s direct intervention. The Pine Tree State’s voters enacted term limits (1993), public financing (1996), and ranked choice voting (2016) at the ballot box and the enactment of each one of these major reforms helped create political will and space for the next. In Massachusetts, reform advocates have tried to make similar end runs around the state’s veto-proof Democratically-controlled state legislature. Prior to the recent legislative enactment of automatic voter registration, the successful 1998 “clean elections” ballot initiative was both the most successful election process reform effort AND the best example of how capable Beacon Hill leaders are of resisting reforms that threaten their hold on power. Despite the fact that 70% voted “yes” on the 1998 ballot measure to create public financing for state legislative elections, the Bay State’s experience with so-called “clean elections” was limited and brief. After passage in 1998, Clean elections advocates (fresh off their successful campaign in Maine) assumed that legislators would be too frightened of the wrath of the voters to obstruct or weaken the voter-passed measure, but shortly after exactly zero legislators who opposed, refused to fund, and obstructed the implementation of clean elections were defeated for reelection in 2000 or 2002, the state legislature repealed the Clean Elections law. At the next election in 2004, no legislators were punished for repealing the will of the voters on clean elections, making clear that the voters of Massachusetts were not as interested in publicly financing elections as reform advocates had assumed.
Perceptions
Why did clean elections go over well in Maine, but not Massachusetts? In his classic and enduring classification of the political cultures of American states, political scientist Daniel Elazar described Maine as “moralistic” and Massachusetts as “individualistic.” This distinction, like the institutional differences discussed above, sheds light on the differing prospects of election reform in Maine and Massachusetts. “Moralistic” voters are more interested in exercising direct control over and participating in law making and governance than are “individualistic” voters. They believe the citizenry has a collective responsibility, and each voter a civic duty, to ensure that the government is faithfully advancing the broad public interest. “Individualistic” voters see themselves as civic consumers who pay professionals to govern in their personal interests. From this more transactional viewpoint, voters choose candidates based on their record or promise of supporting the material interests of their constituents.
For the individualistic (or transactional) voter, process reforms like public financing or ranked choice voting are far less salient in the voting booth. In the aftermath of the 1998 Clean Elections ballot initiative, leaders on Beacon Hill knew that Massachusetts voters were unlikely to punish them for killing the reform that 7 in 10 voters had supported because they knew that their bond with their constituents was primarily about what they had done and could do in the legislature to bring material benefits back to their districts. They knew that their constituents paid much more attention to substantive policy than to “process” issues. Interestingly, the same 1998 ballot that included the clean elections measure also included (in twelve localities across the state) another non-binding question the results of which signaled how weak voters’ support of so-called “clean” elections really was. This second measure was called “Taxpayer Financing of Campaigns” and it was defeated in ALL twelve localities by large margins. This was a pretty clear signal to the Bay State’s professional politicians that Massachusetts voters are more individualistic than moralistic and had supported “clean” elections without much thought about its real meaning or impact.
Virtually every type of “good government” reform proposal is based on moralistic assumptions about government and politics. Moralistic assumptions produce anti-establishment politics and popular distain for entrenched power, “special interests,” and “career politicians,” none of which play particularly well in Massachusetts. Anti-establishment insurgent candidates, right and left, in Massachusetts rarely, if ever, win. The ongoing contest between Congressman Richie Neal and Springfield activist and Attorney, Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, further illustrates the point. Amatul-Wadud is waging a classic moralistic, anti-politics, anti-establishment campaign, attacking Neal for being a career politician who cares more about maintaining the support of his financial backers than about the welfare of the average citizens of the 1st congressional district. Neal, on the other hand, unabashedly promises to continue to advance his constituents’ interests by cultivating personal and institutional power in Washington. It’s a strategy that has gotten him past every challenger he’s ever faced and it will easily get him re-nominated and re-elected this fall because it accurately reflects the perspective of average Massachusetts voters, who want their politicians to be professionals that produce results.
Like public financing, ranked choice voting is a reform proposal with the potential to greatly disrupt the political status quo and incumbent state legislators have the motive and the means to resist its enactment and implementation in Massachusetts. Like most anti-establishment election reform proposals, ranked choice voting has a lot of moving parts that opponents in Massachusetts can use to discredit the idea with voters. Because Massachusetts voters are primarily interested in representatives who “bring home the bacon” candidates and office holders can make the case to voters that ranked choice voting would complicate their efforts to be “responsive” to constituents’ interests. Advocates of ranked choice voting in Massachusetts would have to counter this complexity argument on its own terms without letting up on beating the moralistic or “good government” drum. This two front strategy is even more difficult to pull off in Massachusetts because the state’s “good government” reformers are always out manned and out gunned. The career pols they are trying to weaken have much more financial and political capital to deploy.
So, if election reform is such a heavy lift in Massachusetts due to the institutional strength of incumbents and the weakness of moralistic political appeals, then how did automatic voter registration get enacted in Massachusetts?
Good question.
A key component of arguments against reform in a state with an individualistic political culture is the idea that the proposed change would weaken or complicate the ability of elected officials to cultivate the necessary institutional power to be successful in bringing material benefits back to their constituents. With more complicated proposals, like public financing and ranked choice voting, compelling arguments of this sort, framed around voters’ individualistic expectations, can be crafted and promoted without much fear or difficulty. However, automatic voter registration is a reform that presents greater challenges to its opponents. Because its principle purpose and effect relate in a clear and uncomplicated way to increasing voters’ ability to hold elected officials accountable, automatic voter registration is not incompatible with moralistic or individualistic perspectives. Voters of both persuasions are open to increasing political accountability. Opposing automatic voter registration puts candidates squarely on the defensive and would require the expenditure of political capital that would be better directed elsewhere, especially in a bright blue state where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one.
Unlike public financing or ranked choice voting, Democrats on Beacon Hill have little to fear from automatic voter registration because the most likely beneficiaries of the law will be likely Democratic voters who are also more likely to be individualistic (not moralistic) in their outlook. In Massachusetts, recent Republican governors have been the high profile supporters of electoral reforms intended to weaken the grip of entrenched politicians on Beacon Hill for obvious reasons, so as a blue state Republican with a veto-proof Democratic legislature running for re-election in the era of Trump, signing automatic voter registration legislation was a no brainer for Charlie Baker.