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.
I need a clarification. Are there to be 8 candidates running for 3 positions per district or 8 candidates for each position in a district? if the first one is correct then we’d have a total of 32 candidates on the ballot city wide for city council, correct?
This is yet another way RCV/STV fails to deliver in its promises to avert the election pathology of vote splitting and spoiler candidates. Not only does RCV/STV suffer from the center-squeeze effect that favors extreme candidates, but the only way this method can stop more traditional spoiler candidates from confounding voters' intent is by allowing voters to rank the full slate of candidates. It's conceivable that the city council races will include a couple dozen candidates on the ballot. Only being able to rank a portion of those opens up the possibility of spoilers. The more candidates that voters can't rank, the higher the likelihood that spoilers will block an otherwise viable candidate.
I appreciate the predicament of the county's elections staff, because creating a fully-rankable paper ballot with two dozen candidates is not realistic or even desirable. Imagine trying to mark such a ballot by hand! Imagine trying to wrestle with whether you prefer candidate X as the 15th and Y as the 16th or vice versa. It's not reasonable. But you still know that you prefer X to Z, who you're going to rank at the end. All of these practical and theoretical concerns illustrate why RCV/STV are subpar methods. Using STAR or Approval Voting would have successfully addressed more types of vote splitting and would have used a very simple ballot format to gather voter input.
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.
I need a clarification. Are there to be 8 candidates running for 3 positions per district or 8 candidates for each position in a district? if the first one is correct then we’d have a total of 32 candidates on the ballot city wide for city council, correct?
This is yet another way RCV/STV fails to deliver in its promises to avert the election pathology of vote splitting and spoiler candidates. Not only does RCV/STV suffer from the center-squeeze effect that favors extreme candidates, but the only way this method can stop more traditional spoiler candidates from confounding voters' intent is by allowing voters to rank the full slate of candidates. It's conceivable that the city council races will include a couple dozen candidates on the ballot. Only being able to rank a portion of those opens up the possibility of spoilers. The more candidates that voters can't rank, the higher the likelihood that spoilers will block an otherwise viable candidate.
I appreciate the predicament of the county's elections staff, because creating a fully-rankable paper ballot with two dozen candidates is not realistic or even desirable. Imagine trying to mark such a ballot by hand! Imagine trying to wrestle with whether you prefer candidate X as the 15th and Y as the 16th or vice versa. It's not reasonable. But you still know that you prefer X to Z, who you're going to rank at the end. All of these practical and theoretical concerns illustrate why RCV/STV are subpar methods. Using STAR or Approval Voting would have successfully addressed more types of vote splitting and would have used a very simple ballot format to gather voter input.