On September 9, Rhode Island Democrats voted on whether to keep their lieutenant governor. Sixty-three percent said no. She won.

The count was 42,568 votes for the lieutenant governor and 71,851 for the four people running to replace her. Rhode Island does not hold a runoff. The candidate with the most votes is the nominee, and the most votes were hers, because the 71,851 were in four piles.

Any two of the top three challengers, added together, would have beaten her. The second- and third-place finishers had 50,005 between them. The bottom three together came up 847 short, which is the closest the field came to agreeing on anything.

They agreed on everything else. In the debates all five candidates supported the millionaires' tax, the 2033 deadline for renewable power, and the governor's pause on new charter schools. The one question on which they differed was what the lieutenant governor should do, and the office's main duty is to be there if the governor is not.

Nobody dropped out. Nobody endorsed anybody. Everyone who wanted a turn got one, every voice was heard, and every vote was counted. The second-place finisher conceded on primary night and did not endorse the winner.

The winner called the result a victory for the voices of working people over the backroom insiders, the wealthy donors and the corporate interests. It was. A backroom is where somebody asks somebody else to get out, and in this race nobody did.

Asked afterward what had gone wrong, a supporter of one of the challengers said nothing had. Everyone ran, he said. Everyone was heard. It was democracy, and democracy had spoken, in four voices, all saying the same thing.