Arnold and his wife, Laura,
are among a network of wealthy out-of-state donors
helping fuel ranked-choice voting ballot initiatives in
Massachusetts and beyond, by seeding local committees
with millions of dollars and, in the Arnolds’ case,
buttressing research on the system’s potential impact.
Through their Action Now
Initiative, the Arnolds have committed nearly $3.4
million in support of the Massachusetts ballot proposal,
known as Question 2. Kathryn Murdoch, the
daughter-in-law of Rupert Murdoch, has personally given
$2.5 million since early September. The
Denver-based nonpartisan group Unite America, which she
co-chairs and has seeded with millions toward supporting
democratic reforms, has contributed $445,000.
Neither the Arnolds nor
Murdoch agreed to interview requests sent through the
respective organizations they lead, which instead
offered on-the-record statements.
In all, of the $9.8 million
the Yes on 2 committee has raised, just 19 donors — 12
of whom hail from outside Massachusetts — gave a
combined $9.2 million. Donors outside the state make up
84 percent of all the cash it has reportedly collected.
It’s a similar story
elsewhere. In Alaska, where voters are weighing a
three-pronged initiative, including using
ranked-choice voting in general elections, the Arnolds
and Unite America have given a combined $4.6 million,
the vast majority of what Alaskans for Better Elections
has raised.
The Arnolds also put more than
$1 million behind two separate, and successful,
ranked-choice voting efforts in Maine, as well as
$1 million more in the successful effort last year
to adopt it in New York City, making Action Now
Initiative its leading donor.
That financial heft
underscores the intense interest, and faith, that
national advocates say they have in the system, as well
as the role that states, including Massachusetts, could
play as a bellwether in its adoption on a wider scale.
Fewer than 20 cities or counties
currently use ranked-choice voting, and Maine is the
only state where it is deployed for statewide and
federal races.
“We’re a very important bell
cow,” said Michael Porter, a Harvard University
professor, Brookline resident, and, with $450,000 in
donations, Yes on 2′s biggest in-state contributor. “I
think Massachusetts will be one of the next rounds of
states that are serious and are putting this measure in
place because we believe that political innovation has
to happen in America.”
But the spigot of out-of-state
funding has also drawn skepticism from ranked-voice
voting’s critics, who have used the heavy reliance on
national cash as a key plank in their opposition to
something that would have a profound effect on
Massachusetts elections.
It remains to be seen whether
that sways voters’ feelings for the ballot
question, which has run even or
ahead in scant public polling.
“Money flows around the
political system all the time. This thing will either
win or lose on the strength or weakness of the
arguments, and whether, more broadly, people view it as
a solution to a problem that exists,” said Jack
Santucci, an assistant teaching professor at Drexel
University who has researched ranked-choice voting. “You
can’t create demand for this stuff. And you can’t
purchase demand for it.”
As proposed in
Question 2 on Massachusetts' ballot, ranked-choice
elections would give voters the option of ranking
candidates for an office in order of preference. If a
candidate gets more than 50 percent of the first-choice
votes, he or she is the winner. But if no one
does, the candidate with the fewest votes is stripped
away and those voters are reallocated to the remaining
candidates based on their second choice.
The process goes for as many
rounds as it takes for one candidate to earn a majority
of votes.
If approved, the new system
would be used for primary and general elections for
statewide offices — governor, attorney general, and more
— as well as congressional, state legislative, and
district attorney offices starting in 2022. It would not
apply to presidential elections or municipal elections.
The Arnolds’ group began
seeding such efforts beginning in Maine, struck by what
it has described as paralysis in lawmaking and
frustration with the status quo.
Sam Mar, a vice president at
Arnold Ventures, said that in Massachusetts and
elsewhere, the Arnolds donated money because there
already was a base of local support and volunteers
behind the ranked-choice initiatives.
“Ultimately we’re all part of
this country, and we should all be pitching in to help
voters strengthen our democracy, regardless of where we
live,” Mar said.
That has included pumping
money into political reform research, including
$500,000 to the think tank New America. (Santucci,
the Drexel professor, is among the researchers who have
a contract with New America, under which he is studying
whether ranked-choice voting promotes more women and
people of color to run.)
The Arnolds also aren’t
strangers to Massachusetts’ political landscape.
In 2016, John Arnold gave
$250,000 to an unsuccessful effort to lift the cap on
charter schools in Massachusetts, and they poured more
than
$500,000 into a PAC that helped bolster Governor
Charlie Baker’s reelection in 2018. Last year, Patients
For Affordable Drugs Now, a bipartisan political group
that the couple has funded, put hundreds of thousands of
dollars into an
ad campaign backing a Baker proposal to control
prescription drug costs.
Those helping lead the
ranked-choice ballot initiative argue that despite the
out-of-state help, the push is rooted in local support.
Evan Falchuk, Yes on 2′s chairman, said he first joined
the effort in 2017, and the ballot question has the
backing of prominent Massachusetts officials, from
former governors Deval Patrick and William F. Weld to
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward J. Markey, among
others.
Plus, the committee directly
solicited the out-of-state financial help, said
Mike Zarren, the assistant general manager of the
Boston Celtics and a Yes on 2 board member.
“We reached out to a bunch of
democracy activists. They all didn’t find us,” Zarren
said, arguing that the outside donors have no financial
incentive to see ranked-choice voting pass. “If you care
about this nationally, you sort of have to do it state
by state.“
Still, the zip code of the
donors has provided a consistent rallying cry for its
opponents.
“Why are they so interested in
Massachusetts voting system?” said Anthony Amore, a
former Republican candidate for secretary of state who
has acted as an informal volunteer spokesman for the
committee opposed to Question 2. Asked what he believes
the motivation is, Amore said he is hesitant to
speculate.
“It should give people pause,
as it should for any political candidate or ballot
initiative, of who is funding it,” he said.
Some Democrats, too, have
preached wariness. Kevin Connor, an aide to state
Senator Harriette L. Chandler, warned in a
Commonwealth Magazine op-ed that Murdoch’s
endorsement of ranked-choice voting as a way to help
alleviate extreme partisanship “erases the impact of
progressive champions like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
Ayanna Pressley.”
He added that “for
Massachusetts progressives fighting the status quo, a
voting regime that drags election results to the center
should be viewed with skepticism — especially when
moneyed interests are so supportive.”
Nick Troiano, the executive
director of Unite America, which Murdoch co-chairs, said
in a statement that it is backing ranked-choice in
Massachusetts because it can give voters “more power in
their elections and more choice on their ballot.”
The narrative isn’t limited to
Massachusetts. In right-leaning Alaska, the state
Republican Party, as well as groups such as Planned
Parenthood, oppose the ballot measure there, which also
would create so-called open, or nonpartisan, primaries.
Alaskans, known for their
libertarian and independent streak, often bristle at the
specter of outside influences, said Alex Hirsch, an
associate professor of political science at the
University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“If outside money gets
identified as an influential force,” Hirsch said, “that
often backfires.”
