Rose City Reform: The FAQ Edition.
Disclaimer: The most interesting questions don't always have answers.
Over the past few weeks, Rose City Reform has received a steady stream of questions related to the Charter Commission’s ballot measure.
Sometimes I have the answers, but often I don’t.
As you ponder these questions and my replies, I’d love to hear what you think.
Many of you have already made up your mind about Measure 26-228. Maybe you even voted already.
For you, this post may be superfluous.
But for those of you who are still researching and debating, I’ve put together a list of frequently asked questions I get from readers.
Ironically, my longest reply is a non-answer.
That’s because the most interesting questions tend to be those that can only be answered with – you guessed it – another question.
If we switch to ranked choice voting, do I have to rank all the candidates?
No. Rank who you want, when you want, or don’t rank at all. But please resist the temptation to rank your favorite candidate first and second, third and fourth. That doesn’t give your favorite candidate an advantage – it just means you’re incorrectly marking your ballot.
What types of policies will city councilors vote on in their respective districts?
None. While councilors would be elected within their respective districts, they would serve and vote on the full 12-member council. Policies would only pass with an affirmative vote of seven councilors, or six councilors plus the mayor as a tiebreaker.
If the charter commissioners who designed the system later decide to run for office within that system, would that be a conflict of interest?
No. A conflict of interest in this particular context is narrowly defined to direct financial gain, and it no more applies to charter commissioners than it would apply to city commissioners if Portland City Council approved an alternative plan and the sitting commissioners subsequently decided to run within that system.
How do I know ranked choice voting can’t be gamed?
Ha! This is a trick question, right?
Someone’s always going to try to game the system. Many would argue that our current system is being gamed, resulting in growing polarization that benefits increasingly extreme candidates.
But just because outside forces might strategize to attract, entice and manipulate voters, that doesn’t mean voters are going to let them. In a democracy, the people with the most influence over the outcome of elections remain the voters.
Am I right? Or what do you think?
Why can’t anyone tell me exactly how my vote will be transferred?
If only we had the option, as voters, to read the fine print before we vote on sweeping changes.
Why don’t we?
Because it’s not practical. And that’s not unique to proposed new voting methods. It’s the same with any major charter change or big policy shift.
Constitutions and charters tend to stay broad in order to serve as flexible frameworks. Specifics show up later in ordinances and other related documents. That’s for good reason, because those documents can be adjusted more quickly and easily, unlike a charter that requires a vote of the people to be revised.
That said, the Charter Commission’s intent is pretty clear. My post “Follow that vote!” makes a prediction about the way the system will work based on current best practice.
If an overwhelming majority of voters in a city council district votes for one candidate, but that candidate only gets one of three city council seats, how’s that proportional representation?
Great question.
In lieu of an answer, I’ll make a couple of observations.
First, remember that single transferable vote, the proposed voting method for Portland City Council, has a feature called surplus votes. To learn more about this, read my posts “The trouble with boring voting methods” and “Follow that vote!”.
Surplus votes are an advantage for the majority, but their effect can be hard to predict, because likeminded voters may still rank candidates in different order, or not rank them at all.
Secondly, let’s talk about how proportional representation works.
Proportional representation – which is what Measure 26-228 would bring – is most easily understood in a partisan context.
So let’s do a little thought experiment:
If an overwhelming majority in a district prefers a particular political party, and that party secures two seats out of three, that would probably strike you as representative. And if the third seat goes to the second most popular party in that district, that would probably seem pretty representative as well.
The reason it’s harder to wrap our heads around proportional representation in Portland is that we have nonpartisan city elections. Without party affiliations on the ballot, it’s harder to differentiate between candidates and predict how they’re going to vote.
Therefore, how “representative” the system would be perceived by voters may largely depend on how effectively candidates manage to communicate what they stand for, and how they affiliate with, or differentiate from, each other.
And that, in turn, may be directly influenced by how campaigns, PACs, interest groups and grassroots movements organize around elections.
But enough about my theories. What are yours?
Post them in the comments, reply directly to the email newsletter, or follow me on Twitter at @majavharris.
A video explaining proportional representation – with candy.
Lastly, I want to leave you with a seasonally appropriate video that explains the concept of proportional representation in Portland using different-colored candy pieces.
It’s worth six and a half minutes of your time, and will inspire you to reflect on what issues or platforms the colors might represent within Portland’s nonpartisan system.
Follow @montchris on Twitter to learn more.
Thanks for your answer to the question about proportionately and the example of an election in which one candidate secures a strong majority of the vote but receives only one seat on the Council -- and then ends up under-represented (and potentially outvoted) 2-1 by candidates who receive lesser votes.
That is more than a hypothetical. Most of the top vote getters in recent Council elections have garnered about 40-55% of the vote in their large primary fields. So, outcomes of this kind will be a distinct possibility in the first round of vote tallies – and possible, although less likely, thereafter. Even though the system will preclude crediting candidates with more than 25%+1 of the vote, there will be a calculation of votes received before they are capped and their surplus transferred to others. So, this aspect of the process, although complicated, will still be transparent enough to show the actual level of support for winning candidates. And that’s when the disparities in representation will be clear.
You are right to point out that most proportional representation systems rely on multiple parties (and, I'd add, parliamentary systems) to achieve their purpose. But that's not how it will work in Portland's nonpartisan elections. The outcomes of the new system will rarely be strictly proportionate and sometimes quite disproportionate when measured by the voting power granted to winners in relation to the levels of support they receive from their electorates. And where outcomes are disproportionate, their effect will be contrary to the goal of better reflecting the will of the voters.
Proponents of this system contend it is designed to give voice to voters whose preferred candidates might never be able to pass a 50%+1 threshold. That’s fine, when its outcomes reflect, at least roughly, the will of the voters. But in cases where candidates receive majorities or near majorities and end up in the minority in the representation of their districts, that will clearly not be the case.
Proportionality refers to the selection of candidates, not to the amount of power each elected official has over legislation. Some want to claim there is a problem by only observing first ranked choices and ignoring all the other ranked choices on a person’s vote. This is ridiculous given that the name is literally “Ranked Choice Voting.” Moreover, not having first ranks alone determine the outcome isn’t something that’s going to be resolved in Mapps’ proposal. The person with the most first ranked choices would have no guarantee of winning.