Portland's district map trilemma: Must we choose?
Of course not! This is a public input process, not a multiple-choice test.
Last week, Portland’s Independent District Commission unveiled three district map proposals for the public to examine.
But do commissioners want you to choose your favorite? Yes and no. They want to know your preference, but they’re also interested in what changes you might suggest to improve the maps.
The problem is: When posed as a multiple-choice question, it’s hard to get both answers.
On May 31, Portland’s Independent District Commission – the advisory body tasked with devising a district map for city council elections – reached a significant milestone.
After nearly four months of deliberations, commissioners finally landed on a shared vision for Portland’s future. Among other things, the group coalesced around keeping the west side whole and preserving neighborhoods east of I-205 in a single district.
To demonstrate its flexibility, the commission forwarded three slightly different versions of its district plan to the public, charmingly named after native trees: Maple, Alder, and Cedar.
Click here for interactive maps of all three proposals.
Multiple-choice questions yield limited feedback.
Presenting the public with three alternatives comes with certain tradeoffs. The most notable drawback is that Portlanders might think their task is limited to picking a map. This could diminish the extent of valuable feedback from the community.
Think about it: Your response to the question "Which of these three maps do you prefer?" would likely vary substantially from your answer to "What do you observe when you examine this map?”, or “How could this map represent you more effectively?”
One of the first lessons in journalism is that open-ended inquiries yield more insightful responses and leave room for respondents to challenge your assumptions. This begs the question: Could the District Commission obtain more comprehensive feedback by presenting a single vision and inviting the public to critique it?
In last week’s deliberations, some district commissioners seemed to think so.
“I think the fewer maps we send, the better. It could simplify things in terms of making sure that we're able to get more concise and clean feedback from the public,” Commissioner Lamar Wise told his colleagues.
Nevertheless, in an 8-5 vote - the closest one yet - the commission decided to send all three proposals for public review.
The public’s job is to react, not to choose.
Of course, the District Commission’s approach has benefits too. A curated selection of maps is easy to administer, highlights sticking points, and effectively sets the agenda for what the District Commission wants to discuss.
But the public shouldn’t view the map proposals as prefab solutions. Rather, Portlanders need to be the sounding board for the commission’s ideas. To do that, the public needs to react to the maps, not simply choose between them.
When Rose City Reform tweeted the map proposals last Friday, the most common reaction was: Aren’t they essentially the same? That illustrates the problem with multiple-choice: It encourages us to spot the difference between the options presented to us rather than to reflect on the alternatives that were left out.
So now what? Obviously, it’s too late for the commission to present a singular proposal. But going forward, commissioners can use their citywide platform to host a robust dialogue about why we established districts in the first place: to give equal voice to different geographic areas and boost voting power for diverse constituencies.
Responding to criticism increases legitimacy.
In July, the District Commission will hold two public hearings in each proposed district. The City of Portland also plans to send an informational mailer to all Portlanders and use paid advertising and social media to create buzz about the districting process.
To ensure the proposed maps receive the in-depth scrutiny they deserve, facilitators should encourage open-ended feedback and invite amendments and original solutions from the public.
The commission may very well have gotten it right the first time. Members have conducted extensive research and spoken to a number of community organizations. Even so, there’s no better way to test the strength of an idea than to invite others to poke holes in it. If nothing else, it will legitimize the outcome when commissioners vote on the final map in late August.
With Portland at a historic crossroads, the choices we make today could influence the city's representation for the next century. Let’s make sure our process is as collaborative as the future we envision for all Portlanders.
Here’s how you can influence Portland’s district map:
Submit comments using this online comment form.
Call 311 to share comments verbally.
Mail written comments to Office of Management and Finance, Independent District Commission, 1120 Sw 5th Avenue, Room 901, Portland, OR 97204.
Email public comment to DistrictCommission@portlandoreg….
Attend one of several public meetings, either in-person or via Zoom.
This is thoughtful and correct and I'm glad you've published this. But the bigger problem wasn't so much that they submitted more than one map but that they overconstrained their deliberations so that three nearly identical maps were all they could come up with.
With little more than mere vibes in support, the commission decided early on that they would eliminate from consideration any maps that didn't have three of the four districts touching the southern border of the city and that didn't keep the entire west side in one district.
Further, the commission's deliberations utterly failed to consider the possibilities of multimember districts to lessen the impact caused by the nitpicking on the borders. All three maps from the Commission show the basic west-side mapping problem: to balance population, any west-side district must extend across the river. With multimember districts having a lower (25%+1) threshold for election, larger east-side appendages could have sufficient political power to elect one of the three councilmembers. But the commission's unnecessary constraints prohibited such considerations.
Finally, and somewhat hilariously, the Charter Commission's insistence that two public hearings be held in the proposed districts, it eliminates the possibility of a public hearing in the locations most impacted by the District Commission's maps. Specifically, Sellwood, the neighborhood orphaned in two of the three similar maps, is ineligible to host a hearing. The District Commission, at the very least, should schedule one additional hearing there.