Proposal to scrap Massachusetts’ party primaries can go to November ballot, high court rules

The state Supreme Judicial Court on Monday cleared the way for a proposal that would scrap the state’s party primaries to appear on the November ballot, rejecting a challenge from members of the state Democratic Party’s governing body that the measure violated the state Constitution.

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The court’s ruling all but assures voters will be able to weigh in this fall on the proposal, and potentially reshape how voters pick candidates for some of Massachusetts’ highest offices. The campaign behind the ballot question has said it has already submitted more than enough signatures to officially get it a place on the Nov. 3 ballot.

In its 26-page decision, the court ruled that the proposal doesn’t “significantly interfere with the constitutionally protected right to vote” or the rights of people to seek office, effectively affirming Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell’s decision to certify the proposal.

“Our task is not to determine whether the proposal at issue is better or worse than the current system, or whether it will serve government interests more or less effectively than the status quo,” Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt wrote.

The court’s responsibility, she wrote, is to determine whether the ballot question “presents a reasonable regulation of elections that rationally relates to the general welfare,” she wrote. “. . . We conclude that it does.”

The proposal could fundamentally change Election Day in Massachusetts by eliminating political party primaries for state elections. It would establish a so-called top-two system in which all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, would be listed on a single primary ballot.

Voters could only vote for one candidate, and the top two candidates would advance to the general election. That would create the possibility of voters then picking between, say, a pair of Democrats in a November vote, as opposed to the traditional choice between nominees from different parties.

A handful of states, including California, Washington, and Alaska, use versions of the system already, as do Massachusetts cities. Boston, for example, holds a preliminary election every other September, from which the top two candidates, regardless of party, advance to the November ballot.

The proposal to establish it on the state level has divided Massachusetts’ Democrats. Led by one-time Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Danielle Allen, proponents have argued a dramatic overhaul of how residents vote is necessary to create more competitive elections in a state where many incumbents often cruise to reelection uncontested.

Jesse Littlewood, campaign manager for the group pushing the ballot question, celebrated the court’s decision, saying it means voters can “decide whether their elections are run by party insiders or by the people.”

The proposed top-two system would effectively wipe both major parties’ requirement that candidates earn 15 percent of support from delegates at their respective conventions to make the ballot. That, party leaders have argued, would dilute the role party activists and organizers play in the nominating process.

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“The political insiders who sued to block this reform lost today,” Littlewood said in a statement Monday. “Massachusetts has the least competitive elections in America, and when politicians don’t have to compete, they don’t have to fix what’s broken.”

The campaign has pitted progressives against other members of the state Democratic Party’s own governing body, which voted in April to formally oppose the proposal. The resolution the Democratic State Committee passed declared there was not “conclusive evidence” that so-called all-party primaries are even effective in making elections fairer.

Activists in the party’s progressive wing have also created an opposition campaign and told the Globe last month that they planned to raise money in a bid to persuade voters to reject the plan.

The head of the GOP state party has said she, too, opposes the ballot measure, arguing that in a reliably blue state, the system could shut out Republicans entirely in some races in November.

Two Democratic State Committee members — Martina Jackson, a Newton activist, and Ann Roosevelt, a Cambridge resident who also is the wife of Jim Roosevelt, a prominent Democratic lawyer — led the lawsuit against the measure.

Their challenge argued that the ballot question “cannot survive constitutional scrutiny” because it limits voters’ choices and the right to run for office by reducing general election ballots to only two candidates.

Attorneys who represented Jackson and Roosevelt did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday on the court’s decision. A spokesperson for the state Democratic Party also did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

The ruling is the latest from the Supreme Judicial Court carrying wide ramifications for November. The state’s highest court last week rejected a ballot initiative that would have cut the state income tax rate from 5 percent to 4 percent because of an error by the state’s attorney general in the wording of the proposal’s summary.

Justices have already allowed another ballot question to move forward that would repeal legalization of recreational cannabis, and they helped knock another measure out of contention that targeted the leadership stipends many state lawmakers earn.

The court has yet to rule on yet another challenge, this one to a ballot measure that would establish rent control in Massachusetts.

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