Shawn Griffiths
Voter Choice for Massachusetts 2020 (Voter Choice Mass) announced Wednesday that it has smashed the signature requirement to get ranked choice voting on the November ballot well ahead of the petition deadline. Not only that, people working with the campaign say it is on pace to collect the most signatures for a ballot initiative in Massachusetts history.
In an email to supporters, the campaign said it has collected 17,084 raw signatures, and is averaging over 800 new signatures per day. It needs to collect 13,347 verified signatures by June 17 to go before state voters in the general election.
"Thanks to our amazing volunteers, we're right on track to meet and exceed our campaign goal of 25,000 collected before June 12th," the campaign writes.
According to the campaign, the signature validity rate is around 73 percent. This means it appears likely that the campaign has already cleared the necessary path it needs to get to November, and should have more than enough cushion to fall back on by the June 17 deadline.
The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened the success of many ballot initiatives across the country. However, Voter Choice Mass scored a major legal victory that allowed campaign workers and volunteers to collect signatures electronically in the second stage of the signature gathering process. The state already certified over 111,000 signatures for the statewide ranked choice voting campaign in December.
Voter Choice Mass credits its success to the motivation of its volunteers, who it says have put in the time to reach thousands of Massachusetts voters every day -- even in these uncertain times. The campaign wants Massachusetts to be the next state after Maine to adopt ranked choice voting at the state level.