 I'm Greg Dennis from Precinct One, presenting Article 24 on behalf of the Election Modernization Committee. The recommended vote of the Select Board proposes home rule legislation to adopt rank-choice voting for elections to town-wide offices. To understand the benefits of rank-choice voting, let's look at a key problem in the voting system we use today. That's the problem of vote splitting. Let's say we're holding an election for favorite candy, and two candidates enter the race, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Candy Corn. Early polling shows about 60% prefer Reese's to Candy Corn. So it looks like Peanut Butter Cups will win handily. That is until, uh-oh, a third candidate decides to enter the race, Reese's Minis. This is bad news for Reese's fans. Now their votes are split, and on election day, Candy Corn wins, with less than a majority, less than 50% of the vote. Vote splitting has a number of negative consequences for our elections. First, as we saw in the example, it means that those we elect may lack majority support. Now while non-majority outcomes don't happen in every election, the threat of vote splitting is ever present, and that threat causes prospective candidates to bow out of the race before it has even begun. Fewer candidates means a less diverse candidate pool, it means fewer campaigns drawing voters to the polls, and some it means campaigns are less welcoming, less inclusive, and less engaging than they could be. These are some of the problems that ranked-choice voting can help fix. So how does it work? Well, here are some of the ballots that we see in town elections today. Depending on the number of seats we are filling, we may be asked to vote for up to 1, or up to 2, or up to 3, and Article 24 would replace them all with this ranked ballot. Where voters can choose just one, or if they want, mark a second choice in the second column, third choice in the third column, as many or as few choices as they like, and it doesn't matter how many seats we are filling, 1, 2, or 3, the ballot and instructions stay the same. To see how the votes are counted, let's look at a select board race between the four candidates on this ballot. Mary, Diego, Sally, and Robbie. We start by counting just the first choices, just the marks in this first column. Mary has 36 first choices, Diego 24, Sally 12, and Robbie 28. Mary is in the lead, but with ranked-choice, you can't win with only 36% of the vote. Instead, the last-place candidate, here that's Sally, is dropped, and everyone that voted for Sally has their vote instantly count towards their next choice instead. Then we continue to drop the last-place candidate and transfer their votes until only two candidates remain. When only two are left, the candidate with more than 50% of the vote, a majority, wins the seat. Congratulations, Mary. But what if we're filling two seats on the select board? Well, then Mary wins the first of those two seats, and then we count the ballots over again from the beginning, but with Mary excluded, to fill the second seat. Again, we drop the lowest vote-getter until two candidates are left, at which point the candidate with the majority of the votes wins the second seat. I'm happy to answer any questions about how the votes are counted, but it's important to keep in mind that regardless of the mechanics of the count, the task of the voter remains simple, which is to fill out this ballot, and we know from experience around the country and around the world that voters can handle this. In an exchange for using the ranked ballot and counting the votes in this way, town elections would see a number of benefits. One, we'll ensure that the candidates we elect always have majority support. Two, by ending vote splitting, we'll encourage a larger and more diverse set of candidates to run. There's evidence that this benefits women and people of color in particular. Three, we'll help boost voter turnout because more candidates means more people pulling their friends and neighbors out to vote. Four, we'll limit gamesmanship because lobbying your supporters to bullet vote for you becomes an ineffective strategy under ranked choice. And five, candidates will have an extra incentive to stay positive and civil to pick up the second and third choices from supporters of their opponents. What's the impact of a yes vote? Well, if town meeting votes yes, and if the state approves the homeroom legislation this year, then Arlington voters will decide whether to adopt ranked choice voting on the April 22 town ballot. And if Arlington voters say yes, our first election with ranked choice would be in April 2023. Importantly, that means one, even if we vote yes, we'd still have nearly two years for more public education before ranked choice voting is ever used. And two, a yes vote is ultimately a vote to let Arlington voters have a say. In November, 64% of Arlingtonians said yes to adopting ranked choice voting at the state and federal level. Please vote yes in this motion so that they can decide whether they want it for local elections too. Thank you.