Like lawmakers themselves, Oregonians may not be ready for ranked choice voting

Oregonians have become increasingly dissatisfied with our systems of representation at the state and local level and are interested in ways to restructure our elections to better reflect their interests, according to surveys by the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center.

These sentiments would appear to set the stage for their approval of Measure 117, which would establish systems of ranked choice voting for federal, state and local elections that promise more choices for voters and fewer obstacles for independent, centrist and minor party candidates.

But the center’s findings highlighted a notable difference between voters’ interest in electoral reforms (characterized as “reform curious”) and their more likely support for such reforms (“reform ready”). The center’s analysis put ranked choice voting in the “curious” category, and the design of Measure 117 makes me think that voters will not be ready to support it.

That’s because there are devilish details in the measure. It would establish one version of ranked choice voting for statewide and federal elections and authorize – but not mandate – an entirely different version for local governments. And it doesn’t help that state lawmakers, who drafted this measure for the ballot, exempted themselves from both versions and will continue to be elected through the current plurality system.

Ranked choice voting works differently: It encompasses various ways to give voters the ability to mark their ballots for their first, second or more choices of candidates in an election.

I have long been in favor of ranked choice voting in its more popular “instant runoff” version, now in use in Oregon’s Benton county, in many U.S. cities and in the state of Alaska. This is the single-winner version. Voters rank their preferences in a field of candidates. If no candidate gets a majority of voters’ first choices, less popular candidates are eliminated and their voters’ next choices are counted until a single candidate secures a majority of the votes.

This change would have a centering effect in our elections, especially in primaries. Under our current system, major party candidates can advance to the general election with their party’s full backing despite being favored by less than a majority of the party’s voters. But with instant runoff ranked choice voting, primary winners would be more likely to represent the mainstream of their parties. In the general elections that follow, voters would face fewer forced choices between candidates who represent the extremes of the major parties, while third-party and independent candidates would be better able to compete without becoming spoilers.

If, like me, you’d like to see candidates in our elections win with the support of majorities, you’ll be glad to see this method proposed for Oregon’s primaries and general elections for president, members of Congress and statewide offices, including governor.

But you probably won’t be reassured that state lawmakers exempted themselves from being elected in this manner. Asking why they did so has taken me down a rabbit hole. Lawmakers said they exempted themselves because local election officials were concerned about ballots being too long. But did they have other concerns? Maybe major party leaders wanted to stem demands for open primaries? Or out-of-state donors insisted on including federal races? Whatever the reasons, this will be for other candidates for other offices to live with, not for the legislators themselves.

The other version of ranked choice voting that Measure 117 would authorizes for local governments is the opposite of the instant runoff version. It’s called “single transferable vote” and is designed to elect multiple winners with less-than-majority votes. Confusing? Yes. But the greater problem is that this method would have a splintering effect among the electorate, making room for winners who secure as little as 25% of all votes.

This is the version that Portlanders adopted in the city’s 2022 charter amendment and the one that they’re using for the first time in the current election for their new City Council. Portlanders will also be using the instant-run-off version to elect a single new mayor. So, the city will become a test case for ranked choice voting in both of its designs – the centering version for mayor and the splintering version for council members.

Without waiting for the results of the Portland experiment – both in how the voters react to these new voting methods and how the city fares under those they elect, Measure 117 is asking the rest of the state to follow suit. That’s not the strategy that led to voter approval of the last major change in how we vote in Oregon. Statewide vote-by-mail was approved by Oregon voters in 1998 after more than a decade of testing at the local level. Measure 117 is a less tested proposition and may look like a gamble to voters.

I favor the instant runoff ranked choice voting system proposed for congressional and statewide offices. But I’m worried that what voters will see in Measure 117 is a confusing combination of more complicated voting systems that its drafters were unwilling to apply to themselves.

If Measure 117 fails, the Oregon Values and Belief Center surveys tell us what voters will want to see instead. Oregonians are “reform ready” for campaign finance limits and open primaries. The threat of a potential ballot measure forced lawmakers to enact the former. So that will leave open primaries at the top of Oregonians’ list of reforms to change the dynamics of our elections and force the major parties to be more attentive to the interests of voters in our general elections.

Tim Nesbitt, a former union leader in Oregon, served as an adviser to Governors Ted Kulongoski and John Kitzhaber and later helped to design Measure 98 in 2016, which provided extra, targeted funding for Oregon’s high schools.

oregoncapitalchronicle.com