Is eight the magic number?
City Hall thinks so. At least when it comes to the number of rankings on your ballot.
How many candidates should Rose City voters get to rank on the ballot?
Do you think eight is great, or should we strive for five?
Here’s what City Hall proposes – and how you can weigh in.
Last Thursday, the City of Portland released a draft of its new election code, following voters’ adoption of ranked choice voting last November.
And? Crickets.
A potential explanation for the lack of news coverage is that many code changes are mandated by Portland’s new city charter, leaving little room for public debate.
But the proposed election code is more than just a housekeeping document. It contains multiple policy decisions affecting both voters and political candidates.
Here’s what you need to know – and how you can influence the outcome.
City Hall thinks voters should rank up to eight candidates.
Under the proposed code, Rose City voters would rank up to eight candidates on the ballot, including any write-ins.
In an attached explanation, the City cited research showing that the average Portland voter would likely use more than five rankings. Meanwhile, a grid of rankings surpassing eight would be hard to fit on the ballot and could contribute to increased voter error, the City said.
The City also weighed studies that found evidence of voter fatigue after five rankings. Rose City Reform’s inquiries about the source of the research received no response from City Hall.
Ultimately, the number of rankings available to voters will depend both on the election code and the capabilities of the counties conducting the elections. Since Portland spans three counties – Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington – voters may see local variations caused by software limitations.
Certain mistakes won’t disqualify your ballot from counting.
What should happen if you miss a ranking or unintentionally rank two candidates in the same place?
City Hall thinks your ballot should still count. The draft code proposes replacing your incorrect ranking with your next correct one. According to the City, that’s the best way to honor voters’ intent.
To illustrate, if you accidentally left your first ranking blank but assigned a candidate to second place, the tallying software would count your second ranking as your first.
Likewise, if you accidentally ranked two candidates as your number one, the software would discard those entries and promote your second ranking to first place.
Write-ins must certify their candidacy on Election Day.
If City Hall gets its way, write-in candidates interested in public office must certify their candidacy by 8 PM on Election Day. This policy would eliminate the need to count votes for fictional candidates. In other words, election staff would spend no time or resources on votes for Micky Mouse.
The City noted that some Portlanders might view certification as a barrier to direct democracy.
In Oregon, voters are allowed one write-in per office. Thus, voters get one write-in line each for the mayor and auditor's offices. In the case of city council elections, where three seats are available, the ballot will include three write-in lines.
Care to weigh in? You can start tomorrow night.
The City of Portland will host a community listening session from 6:00 to 7:30 PM tomorrow evening (March 15). The session requires registration and will be recorded and posted on the city’s transition page.
You may also submit written comments or testify at two City Council readings of the code, scheduled for April 12 and April 19, respectively.
Until then and beyond, Rose City Reform will keep you in the loop about the changes coming to City Hall, and to your ballot.
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First of all, in its final report presented by Auditor to the City Council in June 2022, the Charter Commission told the City Council and the public that: "Ranked choice voting would give Portland voters the ability to indicate ALL OF THE CANDIDATES they support in order of preference by marking their ballots to indicate "1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, etc." FOR AS MANY OR AS FEW AS THEY CARE TO RANK" (my emphasis). "ALL...AS MANY AS THEY WANT." Not 8, not 5, not some other number.
Second, to the extent there is any relevant research, it should have been disclosed to the public before the vote, not after. My recollection is that a statement was made at the time by one of the Commission's consultants or supporters to the effect that there was in fact little applicable research.
Why? Because STV voting is used for city council elections in the United States in only one of 19,500 jurisdictions: Cambridge, Massachusetts. And they have at-large STV elections, not by district as approved for Portland- although the tallying math would be the same. As a result, there clearly would be little research about American voter preferences, including "voter fatigue" after 5 rankings. It is not surprising that "Rose City Reform’s inquiries about the source of the research received no response from City Hall."
Here is some research based upon facts in American STV elections- from Cambridge! A sample ballot they had published showed 19 candidates/write-in spaces, and 19 rankings.
I called the Cambridge Elections Commission this week to confirm that they tally by computer in their STV elections. They do- using Dominion Image Cast to read the ballots, and ChoicePlus Pro (from Voting Solutions) to tally. From 1997 until 2019, they had unlimited rankings. They changed to a limit of 15 in 2019 after finding most voters don’t go beyond that.
So, what does it show:
1. It shows that many voters are not "fatigued" after 5 rankings, any will typically rank up to 15.
2. It shows that the statement that "a grid of rankings surpassing eight would be hard to fit on the ballot" is false. If Cambridge can have a grid of 15 rankings, so can Portland.
One would have thought that the county elections and/or transition committee staff, instead of misleading about "research," voter "fatigue," and ballot design, would have contacted the one jurisdiction in the U.S. that has used STV voting successfully for a long time, that has a ballot design with 15 rankings (unlimited until 2019), and that tallies by computer. Why wouldn't they have done so, especially when Cambridge had been help up as an example of STV voting by the Charter Commission?
I encourage the transition committee and county elections staff to go back to the drawing board and devise a plan that gives voters what a majority voted for: the ability to rank all candidates, "as many or as few as they want." Those who want to rank them all (up to 15 if that is a reasonable limit) certainly could, and those who only want to rank 5 (or less)- whether by prefernce or due to "fatigue" would have that ability as well.
In closing, the transition committee staff and others are entitled to their own opinion, but not their own set of facts. They need to do their utmost to comply with what the Charter Commission told the voters, and what the voters subsequently approved- not make some post hoc policy changes that radically alter the approved charter.
I understand the logic, and I understand what the code says, and I literally don't care, but I only just now thought about this: three write-ins for three positions is an unnecessary theoretical redundancy in the newfangled "single transferable vote" regime, right?
In STV, you're not really voting for three candidates, but rather one preferred candidate. One (certified) write-in is the most that will ever receive your vote. As a practical matter, ranking three (certified) write-ins is simply going to cause the algorithm to cycle a couple of rounds to exhaust your lower write-in preferences to get to your highest-ranking (certified) write-in. Why bother?
Anyway, I'm not totally convinced I've thought this through correctly, so I'd be interested in an STV theorist's take on this theoretical scenario.