Massachusetts voters on primary day in September. Emily Glick/CommonWealth Beacon

QUESTION 3 on the November ballot is a matchup between the grass tops and the grassroots. The “yes” committee has raised $7.7 million (with the largest checks coming from private equity), and the “no” committee, with less than $200,000, is backed by a bipartisan coalition of unions, democracy groups, and working people.

Much of the debate so far has been about the credible concerns of how healthy it is to have a small group of wealthy individuals bankroll a law that would make our elections look like the chaotic California elections. In fairness, many of Question 3’s mega-donors genuinely believe in this democracy reform, while it’s also true that some of them spent a lot of money trying to defeat the Fair Share Amendment, which funds our schools and transportation.

Big money aside, less has been written about the merits and the track record of the election system the question would usher in, with all candidates competing in a single primary and the top two finishers advancing to the November final election. Here’s what the top-two election system produces in California and Washington.

In Washington state’s 2016 race for state treasurer, a majority of primary voters in the five-candidate race picked a Democrat. Three Democrats split nearly 52 percent of the vote in the primary. Two Republicans, with 25 percent and 23 percent of the vote, finished first and second and took both spots on the November ballot. A majority of voters picked a Democrat in the primary yet there were no Democrats on the ballot in November.

It cuts both ways. In 2022, six Republicans and two Democrats ran in California’s 4th State Senate District. The Republican candidates collectively won nearly 60 percent of the primary vote, but split it six ways, with the top Republican winning 17 percent. The two Democrats got 22 percent and 19 percent and took both spots on the final ballot. In that contest, nearly 60 percent of primary voters picked a Republican, but in November, they had to choose between two Democrats.

This is the “top-two” system proposed by Question 3 in Massachusetts this year, and we should reject it.

Supporters claim the top-two system boosts representation. The evidence, and conditions in Massachusetts, suggest otherwise. As chair of the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, I take the representation argument seriously. Our communities are finally building a bench. More often now, two or three strong candidates of color run for the same open seat.

Question 3 supporters should welcome that. Yet, under top-two, it’s a risk. In 2012, California’s 31st Congressional District was about 70 percent people of color and more than 40 percent Latino. The leading Democrat vying for the seat, Pete Aguilar, a Mexican-American politician, finished third in the “top-two” primary and was shut out because he split the vote with three other Democrats, while two Republicans finished first and second. In a district Barack Obama won with 57 percent of the vote, no Democrats were on the November ballot because of the top-two system.

These are just a few examples where “top-two” delivered the opposite of what Question 3 backers claim. Proponents of the California system will say that lockouts like these, where vote splitting shuts a party out of November, are rare. While it’s true that it usually doesn’t happen, it happens enough that the threat of it happening is exactly how money becomes more influential in these races.

If a party wants to avoid being locked out of November, significant pressure is placed on new candidates with less money and recognition to back out. We just saw this in California, where the state Democratic Party chair asked Democrats who “do not have a viable path” to drop out of the race for governor in order to reduce the real risk of only two Republicans appearing on the ballot in November.

“Viable path” is often code for money. Gubernatorial candidate Tony Thurmond said party leaders were “essentially telling every candidate of color in the race for governor to drop out.”

Pushing candidates out may be smart strategy for keeping at least one Democrat on California’s November ballot, but it shows the perverse incentives this system creates. How perverse? In 2022, the Republican leader of the California Senate spent about $50,000 on a mailer promoting a Democrat. The goal was to steer Democratic voters toward one Democrat and away from the other, dropping her below the leading Republican and opening second place for the GOP. We don’t need these perverse incentives in Massachusetts. Running is already hard enough for first-time and working-class candidates.

Massachusetts wouldn’t be the first state to say no. Voters in Oregon (2014), Arizona (2012) and, in 2024, South Dakota rejected top-two primaries, mostly by about a two-to-one margin. That same year, similar all-party primary measures failed in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada. Colorado’s fight looks a lot like ours: Backers led by a former health care CEO raised $19 million, the opposition, largely groups representing working people, raised less than $400,000 and still won via a grassroots effort.

The promise of a turnout boost doesn’t hold up either. Two studies of top-two (here and here) found no boost in overall turnout. One found that up to 7 percent more voters skip the race when both finalists are from the same party.

In Massachusetts, the election calendar makes this proposition particularly bad. Far fewer people vote in September. In 2024, 16.6 percent of registered voters cast a primary ballot. In November, about 68 percent voted. If you’re reading an op-ed about primaries, you’re probably a September voter. Thank you for being engaged! It’s true that a small September electorate already picks each party’s nominee. Question 3 wouldn’t fix that. It would give that small electorate a much bigger job: choosing the only two candidates anyone can vote for in November and leaving independents little chance of even making the ballot. Fewer than one in five voters would set the menu for everyone else.

Finally, supporters say our current system shuts out unenrolled voters. But in Massachusetts, unenrolled voters can already vote in any party’s primary. Ironically, Question 3 would make it much harder for unenrolled and third-party candidates to make the November ballot. Today they can qualify for the November ballot by gathering signatures. Under Question 3, they’d first have to survive the September primary against major-party candidates. That has rarely happened in California and Washington.

Democracy reform is personal for me. The first time I walked into the State House, I was a 16-year-old youth organizer advocating for our civics education bill with other Gateway City kids. Eight years later, I ran for state rep. and won a challenging primary and general election after fundraising less than $45,000 (California Assembly races can draw as much as $6 million in spending).

That first session, we renewed our civics push and, thanks to a broad coalition, passed civics education legislation. Democracy is in a fragile spot right now. For too many people, democracy is not delivering, and we have to do better. Many are understandably ready to keep throwing any rock at the system, but we should be wary of big money trying to capitalize on that populist sentiment. The California system threatens to make things worse by further elevating the power of money in our politics and rewarding cynical electioneering.

If the six- and seven-figure checks behind this campaign aren’t reason enough for concern, look at what the top-two system has produced in California and Washington: vote-splitting lockouts, perverse incentives to game the primary, and pressure on candidates without big money to drop out.

The lesson is clear: Vote no on Question 3.

Andy Vargas is a Democratic state representative from Haverhill. He is chair of the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus and co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Business.