Oregon Measure 117 and How The Portland Experiment With Ranked-Choice Voting Backfired
As the first-ever U.S. city to introduce ranked-choice voting for its local elections at the polls last week, the Portland experiment backfired.
The Experiment Went Pear-Shaped
Portland’s ranked-choice voting for the selection of City Councilors went pear-shaped when more than 10% of the electorate failed to vote for any of the 19 mayoral candidates or to put forward an alternative candidate.
Weinstein Says RCV System for Elections was Undemocratic
Bob Weinstein, an unsuccessful West Side City Council candidate last week, has described the outcome of the local council election results in which RCV was put to the test as undemocratic.
An open skeptic of the RCV system, Weinstein said the election outcome was ‘precisely what I was concerned about.’
He said efforts to educate the electorate about RCV were unsuccessful and indicated that putting so many candidates on the ballot ‘effectively disenfranchised’ the people of Portland.
Oregon Measure 117 was Defeated at the Polls
On election day, Measure 117 failed to attract statewide support, effectively ending efforts to introduce RCV in the future.
Measure 117 would have allowed the electorate to vote for preferred candidates in federal and statewide positions – president and Congress, governor, treasurer, attorney general, secretary of state, and labor commissioner.
Winning candidates would be those who received more than 50% of first-place votes. Failing that, candidates with the fewest first-place votes would be eliminated, with those ballots allocated to second-choice candidates.
The process would continue until one candidate received over 50% of the vote.
A Look at the Local Elections
In 2022, Portland adopted changes to its council set-up – the office of the mayor was separate from that of city councilors, and instead of five positions, four districts would each have three representatives, comprising a 12-man council.
In last week’s election, outgoing council members Mingus Mapps, Rene Gonzalez, and Carmen Rubio stood for mayor, alongside 15 other candidates. The race was finally won by newcomer and businessman, Keith Wilson.
Dan Ryan was the only previous serving councilor successfully reelected to the City Council. He will serve District 2.
The new system saw the introduction of between 16 to 30 candidates in each district which was ‘overwhelming’, according to a political science professor at Lewis and Clark College, Ellen Seljan.
More than 10% of the voters left RCV options for Mayoral candidates blank, repeating the pattern for council districts when an average of 20% of the voters did not rank a single candidate.
A closer look shows that 29% of the voters in the district east of Interstate 205, did not rank any of the 16 competing candidates.
North and Northeast Portland had 22 candidates, and 18% of voters failed to use the RCV system.
The same applied to Southeast Portland with 30 candidates and a 17% non-RVC vote, the same percentage as the Westside district, also with 30 candidates.
The Takeaway
Growing dissatisfaction among residents with the governance of Portland and the City Councilors representing them was one of the main reasons for the introduction of RCV approved in 2022.
However, the result on polling day indicated that the system was doomed for failure.
Supporters of Measure 117 believed that ranked-choice voting would better represent political preferences and attract a higher percentage of voters. Those beliefs were shattered by results at the polls, effectively burying Measure 117.
References
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/…