Fair Vote - In the recent, eventful off-year election, the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, took advantage of ranked choice voting to elect their city council and school committee in a historically high turnout election.
While all 11 incumbents maintained their positions in both bodies, the three open seats in the city council were won by Sumbul Siddiqui, the first elected Muslim woman to the city’s council, Quinton Zondervon, an environmental activist who immigrated from Suriname, and Alanna Mallon, the founder of a Cambridge organization for food insecure students. The open seat in the school committee was won by Laurance Kimbrough, a former Cambridge School System employee and the second African American on the committee.
On Election Day, Cambridge saw a 16 percent increase from the previous municipal election in 2015. Bucking a consistent trend of relatively low voter totals, the city tallied its highest number of voters since 1991.
“The beauty of ranked choice voting is that new candidates actually have a shot, because you just need to mobilize and cultivate this essence of collaboration among people,” said Nadya Okamoto, a 2017 Cambridge City Council candidate, in an interview with Representation2020.
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