The truth about the Master Lever

“Straight Ticket Voting” NOT very useful to local Democrats

By Will Collette

From the 2010 Rhode Island ballot. DON'T use this if you want to be
100% certain your vote will count for local candidates.

One of the enduring beliefs of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) is that straight party voting, often called “the Master Lever,” puts them and other political organizations not recognized as statewide political parties at a terrible disadvantage. They say it gives an unfair disadvantage to Democrats and that, they say, is undemocratic.

Like so much the CCA Party believes, the truth is different than what they believe.

November 4 will be the last time Rhode Island voters will have the option to use the “straight ticket voting” option. Its anachronistic nickname, the “Master Lever” harks back to the days when we had voting machines where you flipped levers.

The straight party voting option means that by marking one arrow, you can vote for all the candidates of the party of your choice, whether that’s the Democratic, Republican or Moderate Party. Or at least that’s what most voters believe.

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) has been campaigning against the so-called Master Lever, following the lead of CCA leader and Town Council member Dan Slattery’s mentor, former Moderate Party leader Ken Block. The CCA Party has argued long and hard that the Master Lever unfairly benefits Democrats.

They get no argument from Charlestown Democrats who also supported an end to the master lever, or from Rep. Donna Walsh (D) and Senator Cathie Cool Rumsey (D) who both voted to eliminate the master lever.

However, what the CCA Party seems to have missed is that they have also benefited from straight-party voting. 

Now, how is that possible? Here’s why: all Charlestown’s local elected positions except Moderator – Town Council, Planning Commission and Chariho School Committee – are multi-seat positions. That means that every election cycle, there are at least two open seats for each position.

Under the state’s election rules, straight party voting applies primarily to races where there is only one slot to fill, such as President, Governor, state Representative or state Senator.

They do not apply to non-partisan elected positions, as in the case of Charlestown’s Planning Commission. Even though most candidates come with a party endorsement, they are still considered non-partisan when it comes to the way the voting system works.

The rules are spelled out in the Voter’s Handbook from the Secretary of State’s Office which was just delivered to most voters’ households by mail. Here's what it says in the Secretary of State's Voter Handbook for 2014 (page 27):

For other multi-candidate local positions, such as Town Council or Chariho School Committee, straight party voting gets complicated, as you’ll see below.

In 2012, there were lots of people who thought their straight ticket choice, let’s say for the Democratic Party, also meant they were voting for Democrats for Town Council and Planning Commission too.

They were probably wrong.

Their straight ticket vote did not go to any of the four Democrats who ran for the Planning Commission. 

For Town Council, if the voter voted straight party ticket, but also added two more votes to make a total of five (e.g. in 2012, for Greg Avedisian or Lisa DiBello), that voter inadvertently wiped out the straight-ticket votes for Democrats Paula Andersen, Tom Ferrio and Tim Quillen.

The rules are laid out in the Voter’s Handbook from the Secretary of State’s Office (page 27) which was just delivered to most voters’ households by mail. However, we had to call the Board of Elections twice to get a straight answer about how straight-ticket voting works with local multi-candidate elections.

We can now say with confidence that some 2012 Democratic voters who thought they were also voting for local Democrats when they voted straight ticket, didn’t have their votes counted for local Democrats.

We know that’s the case for Planning unless those straight-ticket voters went into the ballot and marked specific choices for Planning.

If all those 2012 straight-ticket votes had actually gone to Democrats running for Planning Commission, we’d probably have a Democratic majority on Planning.

Platner would have been a Planning
Commission back-bencher without getting
help from the Master Lever.

Ruth Platner would have kept her seat but lost her Planning Commission chair to Brandon Cleary who would have beaten her with almost 2,100 votes to her 1,790.

Frank Glista and Melina Lodge would have come in second and third, with over 1,900 votes each, giving Democrats the majority on Planning for the first time since the world was young.

Democrat Mike Breton would have come in sixth, missing the cut by less than 30 votes. 

The Town Council outcome is more complicated. The three Democrats for Council in 2012 – Paula Andersen, Tim Quillen and Tom Ferrio – would have gotten credit for all the straight-ticket Democratic votes provided the voter didn't make any other picks for Council. 

That is, unless the voter also picked one or two more candidates to flesh out his or her selection with up to five Council choices.

If the voter did that, by rule, the straight-ticket votes for Council no longer counted and the voter had to be sure to individually vote for their Democratic choices. We have no way of knowing how many of the 600 or so Charlestown straight-ticket voters had their straight party votes dropped in 2012. But if many or most of them did, we could also have come out of the 2012 election with a Democratic majority on the Town Council.

Almost certainly, Paula Andersen would have won enough votes to beat Boss Tom Gentz for the Council Presidency. Tim Quillen and Tom Ferrio might have made it, too.

Ah, what might have been.

For this final election outing for the “Master Lever” or “straight-ticket voting,” let’s not let these awkward rules of procedure spoil the democratic process.

I actually agree that the best solution to make sure your vote counts the way you want it to count is to:

1. Don’t use the straight-ticket arrow at all.
2. Make deliberate, hopefully informed, choices of who you really want in office.
3. When it comes to the local, multi-candidate offices of Council, Chariho School Committee and Planning Committee, only vote for those candidates you think are the right people for the job.
4. You don’t have to cast a vote for each opening. Your vote still counts if you only vote for three candidates – hopefully the Dems – for Town Council. The term for this is “bullet voting.”
5. If you don’t like any of the candidates for Planning or School Committee, don’t vote for them. You don’t have to. You can leave it blank but you also have the option of writing in the name of someone you really want. 

Write-ins are generally pretty ineffective, except when they’re not. 

Just ask Deborah A. “Deb” Carney, who was surprised to find herself elected to the Chariho School Committee just a few years back. Enough Charlestown voters wrote her in because they preferred her to what was offered. Even though she wasn’t running. Deb also served with distinction on the Town Council.

NOTE: even though two-term Councilor Lisa DiBello has announced her withdrawal from the Council race, she will still be on the ballot. She has not filed a withdrawal with the Board of Elections. In fact, because she failed to file her campaign disclosure form due on October 7, she is listed as in violation for the past due report and is racking up fines. The BOE still lists her campaign as "active."

There's more involved in withdrawing than just telling the Westerly Sun.