Voters reject ranked choice voting
Published November 5, 2020
By MAUREEN DOHERTY and DAN TOMASELLO
NORTH READING — Former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden and House Minority Brad Jones (R-North Reading) topped their respective tickets in Tuesday’s presidential and state election with impressive showings.
According to the unofficial election results released by Town Clerk Barbara Stats Wednesday morning, 9,872 out of the town’s 11,909 registered voters cast ballots in this presidential and state election for a nearly 83 percent turnout.
The results of the quadrennial election are unofficial because under new state laws in force during the pandemic, mail-in ballots and absentee ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 or deposited into the ballot drop-off box by 8 p.m. on Election Day (when the box installed outside town hall was locked) are being given until this Friday, Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. to be received by the Town Clerk’s office. The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office is giving cities and towns until next Monday, Nov. 9 to file their final official vote tallies.
The state law expanded the Early Voting option to 14 consecutive days and provided automatically generated ballot applications for a mail-in ballot option to every registered voter in the state, effectively allowing “no-excuses” early voting. The traditional absentee ballot application process requires voters to give a reason for their inability to get to the polls on election day due to being unable to be in the town during the polling hours, illness or religious reasons.
Locally, Biden defeated Republican President Donald Trump.
According to the unofficial town results, Biden and running mate Kamala Harris received 5,501 votes while Trump and Vice President Mike Pence earned 4,073 votes.
Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen garnered 135 votes and Green-Rainbow Party candidate Howie Hawkins got 35 votes. There were also 53 write-in candidates and 75 blanks cast for a total of 9,872.
The outcome of the presidential election has also been left in limbo due to the volume of millions of mail-in ballots around the country still to be counted, many in battleground states. At press time, Biden led with 238 Electoral College votes and 70,093,805 popular votes to Trump’s 213 Electoral College votes and 67,346,146 popular votes. A total of 270 Electoral College votes are needed to win. Both sides are threatening court action to resolve it.
Rep. Jones sweeps
The other race garnering intense interest in town was that of House Minority Leader Brad Jones (R-North Reading) and his Democratic challenger, Michelle Mullet, also a North Reading resident, with both seeking to represent the 20th Middlesex District which includes all of North Reading and Lynnfield, half of Reading and parts of Middleton.
Jones prevailed by nearly 3,400 votes in town. He earned 6,335 votes here to 2,948 for Mullet. There were also 586 blanks and 3 write-ins.
A member of the House of Representatives since January 1995, Jones has served the district as House Minority Leader since 2003.
“What a night,” Jones wrote on his Facebook page. “A clean sweep in every town. Thank you for your overwhelming support with a resounding victory.”
Mullet thanked the all voters of the 20th Middlesex District as well as the campaign staff, elected officials and grassroots organizers who supported her candidacy.
“This campaign wasn’t just about me,” Mullet wrote on her campaign’s Facebook page on Wednesday morning. “It was about being a forward-thinking, futuristic leader in the bigger, progressive movement. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the progressive organizations that believed in me and my vision for our district and our state.”
Moulton re-elected
Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton defeated Republican challenger John Paul Moran of Billerica locally by a margin of 5,627 to 3,797 votes. Moulton, who was re-elected to a fourth term on Tuesday, has represented the 6th Congressional District since 2015.
In the race for U.S. Senate, Democratic incumbent Edward Markey defeated Republican challenger Kevin J. O’Connor here by 1,405 votes, prevailing in town 5,455 to 4,050. Markey, who was elected to a second six-year term on Tuesday, was first elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election in 2013 after serving for 37 years as a representative in Congress.
Write-in candidate Shiva Ayyadurai, who lost the Republican primary to O’Connor September 1, got 37 votes in North Reading. There were also 28 other write-in candidates and 302 blanks in this race.
Unopposed races
Three candidates ran unopposed in Tuesday’s election.
State Sen. Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester), the Senate Minority Leader since 2011, was reelected to represent the 1st Essex and Middlesex District. He received 6,901 votes in North Reading and was first elected to the state Senate in 1995, succeeding the late Sen. Robert Buell.
Democratic Fifth District Governor’s Councilor Eileen R. Duff of Gloucester earned 6,073 votes in town.
Middlesex County Register of Probate Tara E. DeCristofaro, a Medford Democrat, got 6,146 votes in town.
Two ballot questions
Townspeople joined the rest of the state by approving Question 1, an expansion of the Right to Repair law, overwhelmingly, 7,073 to 2,176 votes. There were also 623 blanks.
Beginning in 2022, the law will require that motor vehicle owners and independent repair facilities be provided with expanded access to mechanical data related to vehicle maintenance and repair transmitted wirelessly.
“By voting yes on 1, Massachusetts has now updated Right to Repair for the modern age of connected cars,” said Right to Repair/Yes on 1 Director Tommy Hickey in a statement. “The thousands of ‘Yes on 1’ signs in front of small businesses around the state tell the story – automakers were trying to corner the market on car repairs, but the voters stopped them. The people have spoken, by a huge margin, in favor of immediately updating Right to Repair so it applies to today’s high-tech cars and trucks.”
The Coalition for Safe and Secure Data tapped into the more than $26.4 million raised to fight the ballot question by running non-stop ads, including ominous spots suggesting that location data could be stolen, putting victims of domestic violence at risk, according to the State House News Service.
“As we have said from the beginning, the right to repair and the ability of local repair shops to access vehicle repair information are already enshrined in Massachusetts law,” the Coalition for Safe and Secure Data said in a statement. “(Tuesday’s) vote will do nothing to enhance that right – it will only grant real time, two-way access to your vehicle and increase risk. At no point did the Yes side provide any credible arguments as to why national auto parts chains need this information to service your vehicles.”
Similar to voters across the state, North Reading voters rejected Question 2 by a wide margin of 5,874 to 3,244. If passed it would have implemented ranked choice voting in 2022.
The No on 2 campaign was thrilled with the defeat of the ranked choice voting ballot question.
“Thank you to everyone who gave us donations, distributed and hosted lawn signs, liked and shared our Facebook page, held our signs at rallies, wrote letters to the newspapers and got the word out to friends and family,” a spokesperson wrote on the No on 2’s Facebook page. “Thank you to everyone who voted against this initiative. We are incredibly proud of the campaign that we ran. We were hugely outspent but we proved that people working together can achieve so much.”
Yes on 2 campaign manager Cara Brown McCormick expressed her disappointment that Question 2 was defeated.
“We came up short in this election, and we are obviously deeply disappointed,” said Brown McCormick in a statement on the campaign’s Facebook page. “But that’s certainly no reflection of the hard work of the thousands of dedicated volunteers, staff and surrogates of this campaign. Even amidst a global pandemic, we were able to mobilize a movement to strengthen our democracy in a time when it’s needed most. We were attempting to do something historic in Massachusetts and fell short, but the incredible groundswell of support from volunteers and reformers that assembled behind this campaign is reason enough to stay optimistic about the future of our democracy.”
See more election day photos here.
