Democracy Moves at the Speed of Trust

What Three Polling Places in Washington, D.C. Taught Me About Ranked Choice Voting

Democracy Moves at the Speed of Trust

What Three Polling Places in Washington, D.C. Taught Me About Ranked Choice Voting

By Edwyn Shoemaker

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There are moments in organizing that stay with you long after the meetings end.

In June, I went to Washington to strengthen relationships with national partners working to improve democracy, meet with members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation (my home state) about the Fair Representation Act, and spend time with election officials, organizers, researchers, advocates, and volunteers from across the country.

I expected those meetings to define the trip. They didn’t.

When people ask about the trip, they usually ask about Capitol Hill or the meetings I had. But the conversations I can’t stop thinking about took place outside three neighborhood polling places.

Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in Brookland.

Dunbar High School, whose history is inseparable from Black educational excellence in Washington.

The Woodridge Neighborhood Library in Ward 5, where longtime residents and newer families now share the same neighborhood.

Over those few days, I watched neighbors greet each other before walking into the polls. Poll workers welcomed regulars by name. Parents came with their children. Older residents lingered outside talking politics. At each location, it felt less like a transaction and more like a neighborhood gathering.

That struck me.

These weren’t just polling places. They were community spaces. I’ll admit I showed up thinking I’d spend most of my time explaining ballots.

Instead, voters explained something to me.

Here’s something I wasn’t expecting at all.

District residents pay federal taxes. They serve in the military.

Yet they have no voting representation in Congress. They are not a state.

For many D.C. residents, municipal elections are among the few opportunities they have to directly shape the government that affects their daily lives.

People treated Election Day with a seriousness that was contagious.

You could feel that energy all day.

People weren’t rushing through voting on their lunch break.

They stayed.

They talked.

They debated candidates in the parking lot.

They asked volunteers questions.

Some thanked poll workers before leaving.

For a city whose residents lack voting representation in Congress, these local elections carry a weight that’s hard to appreciate until you see it firsthand.

“I think I’ve got this”

Every conversation started the same way.

“Hi! Would you like a quick explanation of how ranked-choice voting works?” Most people smiled politely. Some laughed.

One gentleman looked down at his ballot, looked back at me, smiled, and said, “I think I’ve got this.” Another woman chuckled and told me, “It isn’t exactly rocket science.” Again and again, I heard the same responses.

“It’s pretty straightforward.” “I figured it out.” “It’s easy.”

By lunchtime on the first day, I started realizing I’d prepared for the wrong conversation.

I hadn’t met a single voter who genuinely struggled to understand how to rank candidates. Not one.

For years, opponents of ranked-choice voting have argued that voters will be confused. That ranking candidates is somehow too complicated. That ordinary people will make mistakes and become discouraged from participating.

Standing outside those polling places, those arguments felt disconnected from reality. The voters understood the ballot. If anything, many seemed mildly amused that we thought they needed help.

But then something much more interesting happened.

“I’m still not sure about it.”

Once people had voted, I’d ask another question. “So … what did you think?” That’s when the real conversations began.

Several voters told me they still weren’t sure how they felt about ranked-choice voting. Not because they couldn’t use it. But because they weren’t sure who it was really for. One conversation has stayed with me.

A gentleman told me he’d been hearing that ranked-choice voting was really something the new White residents moving into DC wanted. Something created by gentrifiers.

Not something designed for long-time Black residents.

Not something intended to benefit working-class neighborhoods.

They wanted to know whether this reform had been built with their community in mind or handed down to it.

Who benefits?

Who asked for this? Why now?

Those are profoundly different questions. And they deserved an honest answer.

Every Reform Has a History

I told him I understood why he was skeptical.

Communities that have historically been excluded from power have every reason to ask difficult questions when someone proposes changing the rules.

Growing up, I learned early what it feels like to have institutions make decisions about your life without asking your opinion.

Maybe that’s why this conversation hit me differently than I expected.

It didn’t feel like skepticism.

It felt like someone trying to decide whether democracy still had room for him.

When he asked who this reform was really for, I didn’t hear cynicism.

I heard someone trying to decide whether this was another change being done to his community or one being built with it.

It was a conversation about power.

So instead of launching into an explanation of how to fill out a ballot, I asked him if I could tell him a story.

“Can I tell you about Oakland?” He nodded.

Oakland Isn’t So Different From D.C.

When people think about Oakland today, many think about rising housing costs or political dysfunction.

But Oakland has another history. It is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party.

For decades, it was one of the nation’s centers of Black political leadership.

Like D.C. — often called “Chocolate City” because of its deep Black cultural and political history — Oakland was no stranger to electing Black leaders. It wasn’t a city wondering whether Black candidates could win. They already had.

Then Oakland adopted ranked choice voting.

The city’s first mayoral election under the new system resulted in the election of Jean Quan, an Asian American woman. The following 2 Mayors elected under RCV, Libby Schaaf and Sheng Thao, were also not from the city’s black community.

For many people, especially within parts of Oakland’s Black community, the conclusion seemed obvious — ranked-choice voting is not in the best interest of our community.

The Oakland branch of the NAACP publicly opposed the system. But I told him something I don’t think enough people understand.

Changing the rules of democracy doesn’t just require voters to adapt. It requires candidates to adapt, too.

For generations, candidates had campaigned under plurality elections.

Win your base.

Attack your opponents.

Drive up their negatives.

Finish first.

Under ranked-choice voting, those incentives change.

Candidates who continue campaigning as though only first-choice votes matter often discover that they’re leaving votes on the table.

Successful ranked-choice campaigns seek not only first-choice support. They seek second-choice and third-choice support.

They ask themselves a different question.

“How do I become acceptable to people who don’t agree with me on everything?” That changes how campaigns are run.

It changes how coalitions are built.

It changes how candidates speak to communities outside their traditional base. None of that happens overnight.

It takes voters time to become comfortable with a new voting system.

It takes campaigns time to realize that old habits no longer produce the best results. Candidates learned. Voters learned. The city adjusted.

And years later, after retiring from Congress, Barbara Lee looked at the challenges facing her hometown and decided she still had more to contribute.

She entered the mayor’s race under the very ranked-choice voting system that had once been blamed for so much frustration.

And she won, becoming the first Black woman to lead the city and that mattered.

Not because ranked-choice voting suddenly “started working.”

It had been working all along.

The city had changed. Candidates had changed. Voters had changed.

Communities had time to experience the system instead of imagining what it might do.

The system hadn’t suddenly become fairer. People had simply experienced it. They understood it.

They had watched candidates adapt. They had watched themselves adapt.

The Questions Aren’t New

This is usually the part of the conversation where people look at me funny.

It surprises almost everyone.

America has been using forms of ranked-choice voting for more than a century.

One of the biggest misconceptions about ranked-choice voting is that it’s some new idea dreamed up by academics or Silicon Valley technologists.

The irony is that many Americans have lived under ranked-choice voting without ever realizing it.

During the Progressive Era, cities across the country were looking for ways to weaken corrupt political machines that had dominated municipal government for decades. Reformers wanted elections that rewarded coalition-building instead of patronage, and systems that gave neighborhoods and communities outside the political establishment a realistic chance to win representation.

By the mid-20th century, cities including New York, Cincinnati, Toledo, Boulder, Cleveland, and Cambridge had adopted forms of proportional ranked-choice voting.

The results were remarkable.

Cincinnati elected Theodore Berry, who would later become the city’s first Black mayor.

New York’s proportional elections brought greater representation for Jewish communities, labor organizers, women, and political minorities.

People who had long been shut out of city hall suddenly had a path to representation.

Ranked-choice voting became, in many places, a victim of its own success. It disrupted long-standing political machines and made it harder for entrenched interests to monopolize power. Many cities eventually repealed these systems after organized political campaigns argued they were too confusing or unnecessary.

Standing outside those polling places in Washington, I couldn’t help thinking that I was hearing echoes of those same conversations nearly a century later. Different city. Different communities. Different generation. But many of the questions hadn’t changed. People still wanted to know who benefited. They still wondered whether a new set of democratic rules would strengthen their communities or leave them behind.

One city never turned back.

Cambridge.

For more than 80 years, Cambridge has quietly kept proving that the experiment works.

Every election, the city produces one of the most representative municipal governments in

America. Massachusetts has been living proof for generations.

Then I Told Him About Boston

I told him where I was from.

Boston.

Boston has elected Black members of Congress. Black state legislators.

Black city councilors. Black sheriffs.

Black district attorneys.

We have had a Black acting mayor.

But despite nearly four centuries of history, Boston has never elected a Black mayor.

That’s not an argument for ranked-choice voting by itself.

It’s a reminder that the rules of democracy shape which coalitions become possible.

Neighborhoods change.

Communities that are the majority today may one day find themselves in the minority.

That’s exactly why democratic rules matter.

I told him ranked-choice voting doesn’t guarantee that Black candidates, women, immigrants, or working-class candidates will win — and it shouldn’t. Democracy shouldn’t promise outcomes.

What it can do is reward candidates who build broader coalitions instead of narrower ones. It can encourage candidates to ask for support beyond their own neighborhoods.

It can reduce the incentives to divide communities against one another.

And if a community ever finds itself no longer holding numerical power, ranked-choice voting creates a political environment in which consensus becomes more valuable than simply assembling the largest faction.

Real democracy is worth fighting for.

Democracy Moves at the Speed of Trust

As I continued those conversations over several days, I noticed something. Different neighborhoods.

Different voters.

Different life experiences.

The same underlying question. Not: “How do I rank candidates?” Instead:

“Why should I trust this?”

People don’t decide whether to support democratic reforms because they finally understand which bubbles to fill in.

They decide because someone they trust helps them understand why those reforms exist.

Democracy moves at the speed of trust. That’s what those sidewalks taught me.

What I Brought Home

When I returned home to Massachusetts, people asked me what I learned in DC. The answer wasn’t about Congress. It wasn’t about legislation.

It wasn’t even primarily about ranked choice voting. It was about organizing.

It will be determined by whether conversations like the ones I had outside Turkey Thicket, Dunbar High School and the Woodridge Neighborhood Library happen in Brockton.

In Springfield. In Chelsea. In Lowell. In Salem. In Boston. In Pittsfield. In Worcester.

Around kitchen tables. At barber shops. In churches. At union halls. In libraries. At neighborhood festivals.

We Need More Messengers

Standing outside those three polling places, I realized something that will shape how I organize for the rest of my career.

Before I went to Washington, I thought my job was to explain ranked-choice voting.

I came home realizing my job is much simpler — and much harder.

To help people believe that democracy still belongs to them.

That realization has changed the way I think about our work at Voter Choice Massachusetts.

Yes, we need good research.

Yes, we need good legislation.

Yes, we need compelling data.

But more than anything, we need trusted messengers.

People rooted in their own communities who are willing to listen before they persuade, answer difficult questions with honesty and help their neighbors understand not just how ranked-choice voting works, but why it matters.

That’s why our organization is growing.

Not because we think more staff alone changes democracy.

Because every new organizer means more conversations like the ones I had in Washington.

We’re bringing on new organizers from communities across the Commonwealth — not simply to advocate for a different voting system, but to have the kinds of conversations I found myself having outside those polling places in Washington.

Because that work doesn’t begin in legislatures.

It begins on sidewalks. Outside schools. Outside libraries. Outside recreation centers.

At barber shops. Around kitchen tables. At neighborhood festivals.

Wherever neighbors are willing to stop for a few minutes and ask each other difficult questions.

After standing outside those three polling places, I’m convinced that democracy isn’t built one election at a time.

It’s built one conversation at a time.

Edwyn Shoemaker is Executive Director of Voter Choice Massachusetts.