How to vote optimally in Cambridge elections

Cambridge elections for City Council and School Committee uses ranked choice voting: you rank your preferred candidates starting with your favorite as #1, second favorite as #2, etc.. This is different from the kind of voting you’re used to from elsewhere in the US.

So how do you have maximum impact in the election? Let’s find out!

How ranked-choice voting works

When you vote, you rank candidates starting from #1, and some number of additional candidates. Let’s say you vote the following ranking:

1. Candide McCandidateFace (your favorite)
2. Frank Furter (second favorite)
3. Bobby Tables Jr (third favorite)

To simplify somewhat, there is a quota a candidate needs to win, let’s say 2300 votes. Voting goes in multiple rounds. In each round the Election Commission counts all votes (#1s plus transfer) for all candidates:

• Any candidate who got more than the quota wins. Surplus votes beyond the quota are moved to their #2 choice, with surplus votes chosen randomly. For example, let’s say Candide got 2400 votes, that means 2400 - 2300 = 100 voters who voted #1 for Candide will be chosen and their #2 vote used. If yours is chosen, your vote will be transferred to Frank Furter, with Candide already having been elected.
• As long as there are more than 9 candidates, the candidate with the least votes (#1 votes plus transfers) is eliminated. Any voters who have them currently as #1 or transfer move on to their next choice. Continuing our example, if Frank Furter is eliminated, your vote will be transferred on to Bobby Tables.

In the end, each voter gets at most one vote (some voters get eliminated when they run out of transfers).

You can see this process in action in the 2023 election, with this record of round-by-round vote transfers.

If this isn’t quite clear, that’s OK. The important thing is how you vote, which is what I’ll cover next.

The best way to optimize your vote

Step #1: Choose multiple candidates

You want to rank multiple candidates. Otherwise your vote may get wasted. So this means you need some way to figure out a group of candidates you support.

The easiest way to do this is to look at endorsements from groups that align with your opinions. For example, if you love penguins and kittens, you can start by writing down all the people endorsed by Penguin Lovers of Cambridge, and then remove anyone endorsed by the Anti-Kitten League.

I’ll be writing another article talking about the various endorsing groups and my opinion about them, so subscribe below if you haven’t already to get notified when it’s out.

Step #2: Don’t worry about candidate viability

In normal US elections, the person with the most vote wins. That means you have to consider whether a candidate is electable: if there are three candidates getting 50%, 45%, and 5% of the polls, there’s no point in voting for the candidate with 5%, you basically want to choose between the top two candidates.

In Cambridge you don’t have that worry. If your favorite candidate doesn’t make it, no problem, your vote gets transferred to the next person on your ranked list.

Step #3: Order your votes in according to your preferences

This is where many people go wrong, the secret sauce that makes all the difference. Are you ready? Here’s the secret: you shouldn’t be spending a lot of time on this. Just make sure everyone you’re ranking actually aligns with your beliefs.

Yes, if you have a favorite you should definitely vote them #1.

Yes, the ordering makes a small difference.

Yes, candidates want you to vote them #1 and spend a lot of time pushing this.

So you can spend a little time doing research on individual candidates (and I’ll be writing other articles about how to understand what candidates really mean and what they really will do—as a preview, some candidates will lie), but that’s not the real way to make an impact.

Step #4: Convince other people to vote

You have at most one vote, and that’s it. The ordering might impact outcomes a little, but it’s still just one vote.

But if you convince someone else to vote for some or all of your preferred candidates, now you’ve gotten two votes. That’s vastly more impact on outcomes than anything you can do with the ranking of your candidates.

So you should:

• Talk to friends and coworkers and neighbors and make sure they know who to vote for.
• Volunteer for your favorite candidate or candidates, they will have ways for you to help.
• Donate to candidates
• Volunteer for one of the IEPACs that push specific policy agendas you agree with.

All of this will have far more impact than how you rank your vote. Voting is a bare minimum: you should do it, but real impact comes from influencing other people.

Who should you vote for?

That’s a different discussion, sign up below to get more of my emails which will be covering this in the future.

A bit more

Song of the day: Somos Hermanos by ESSO.