Almost four years ago, in 2017, the Amherst Charter Commission approved a new charter, and six months later the citizens of Amherst adopted it.

Among other things, the charter established ranked-choice voting as the method to elect town offices, beginning this November. But due to a decision made by the council, we are now looking at 2023 before ranked-choice voting is finally implemented, more than six years after the initial approval.

Without RCV in place this fall, we are looking at candidates winning election with only small fractions of the vote. The second council, the school committee, and other positions, may thereby be even less representative than in the past — the opposite of the promise of ranked-choice voting.

The citizens of Easthampton also recently adopted RCV, beginning this November, but it will only take twoand a half years from initial approval in 2019 to first use. New York City was even faster, less than two years from its initial approval in 2019 to its recent first use.

So what’s the hold up in Amherst? The charter outlined a process for an RCV commission to develop the specific election rules, and built in many months for their completion and adoption by the town council as a bylaw. This scenario was approved by the Massachusetts attorney general as part of the charter, whose entire purpose is to allow home rule.

However, when the RCV commission consulted with the secretary of the commonwealth, they were instead advised to request a special act of the Massachusetts Legislature. When presented with the finished RCV product in December 2020, the council chose to follow the secretary’s advice rather than the attorney general’s legal opinion. And the notoriously slow Legislature took until the end of June to even hold a hearing on the bill.

There is a simple solution. The council could immediately adopt the RCV commission’s proposal as a bylaw, as expected by the charter and by the citizens of Amherst. There is no need to wait for the Legislature to do anything. I emphatically urge the council to take responsibility and fulfill this promise.

Andy Anderson

Amherst