THE BEE was in the forefront in advocating for a new form of city government a year ago, with a first-ever series of editorials on the same subject – urging the passage of the reform plan on the ballot. The big vested interests downtown worked hard to create fear intended to defeat the measure, as had worked every time before when city government reform reared its head – after all, the old inadequate city government form meant keeping the power in the city centered downtown, as it had been for over a century.
But this time it was pretty obvious that the city had outgrown what the Portland Tribune called our “clown car form of government”, and was clearly dysfunctional – and the voters in the city took a deep breath and voted for change. It was a good decision. And, if some aspects of our new and more representational form of city government prove not to work as intended, the measure passed last year does allow for informed change to fix it.
So now our first city governmental election, using ranked-choice voting, is coming up as part of the Presidential election in November – and you’ll be asked to pick a Mayor and, through a “rank six” preference system, the three City Council members who will represent the one, of the four city districts, in which you live.
The advantage of the tiered ranked-choice voting system to be used in selecting three council members for each of the city’s four districts is that it is intended to bring about a more representational City Council – and, indeed, it has brought forth both more, and more diverse, candidates per district than conventional voting ever would have. In the two city districts that THE BEE serves – Districts 3 and 4 – there are some thirty candidates each! And for the city’s four districts as a whole, there are nearly a hundred candidates for the twelve available seats.
Oh, and there’s one other advantage to this ranked-choice system: It eliminates run-off elections, which draw out the election process, reduce subsequent voter participation, and cost a great deal of money to conduct.
But, ranked-choice voting in such races requires a bit more from Portland voters than they have ever been asked to do: To know something about ALL the candidates in their voting district. Or at least as many of them as possible. If you are to rank your choices, you DO have to know something about the choices, do you not?
This has been a concern of ours, because in past city and county elections, candidates have been elected and ballot measures have been passed based mostly on simplistic and sometimes misleading political ads – even though what these candidates and measures would actually do were clearly and accurately outlined in the voters’ pamphlet.
Those of us who actually do read the pamphlet avoided voting for the candidates and issues that were contrary to our views, and the rest of the voters who voted for them apparently were caught by surprise by what the winners actually did – which was what they said they would in the voters’ pamphlet! And it was not what the ads suggested. Candidates who won that election seemed to think their election validated what they promised to do, but it shocked the voters instead, because they hadn’t read the pamphlet – and some of the candidates and measures faced voter opposition in the next election. (And we have had to repeal a state drug measure that did far more than most voters understood, expected, or wanted.)
It’s possible to be cynical about voter apathy leading to failure to learn what they need to know to make informed ranked choices – and, if ranked-choice voting disappoints in Portland, it will only be because of the voters did not do what they needed to do to make INFORMED ranked choices.
One thing we at THE BEE were hoping for was that there would actually be some form of Portland City Election candidate voters’ pamphlet. We have informally been told that all the candidates have already been asked to contribute to the Oregon Voters Handbook, where their statements will be included with the state and federal election candidates. We are relieved to hear it. There had better be, or many voters who really do want to be diligent in learning about the candidates they are being asked to choose from may have difficulty doing that.
In the City Council races, voters are being asked to choose – in order of preference – six of the many candidates for the three available seats in your district. If you vote for fewer of them, your vote might disappear from the process, we are told, after any candidates you ranked votes for have been eliminated in successive ranked-choice steps, to arrive at the three winners.
So the city is urging you to make your preference selections down to the sixth choice which the ballot allows you. One piece of advice from the experts, though, is to avoid ranking among your six ANYBODY you DON’T want to serve on the City Council. You don’t want even your sixth-ranked vote to eventually help elect somebody you really don’t want on the council!
We hope every BEE reader, and every voter in the city, will step up to take the remaining time before the election to get acquainted with ALL the City Council candidates in their district.
In-person candidate forums are a good place to do that; for District 3, Southeast Uplift presented such a forum in September – but without enough notice to THE BEE for us to include it in our September calendar of events. (But as soon as we learned of it, we added it to our websites’ online list of events.) However, individual neighborhood associations, and perhaps other groups, will seek to hold more such gatherings to let voters meet the candidates. Attend one if you can.
For District 4, SMILE – the Sellwood and Westmoreland neighborhood association – is holding such a meet-the-candidate event early this month on Sunday, October 6, from 1 to 4 p.m. It’s been moved to the Sellwood Community House, S.E. 15th and Spokane in Sellwood – and it’s free, and open to all. All declared District 4 candidates have been invited to come and briefly introduce themselves, to provide election materials, and to stay and chat with their new District 4 voters east of the Willamette River.
And when you get your Oregon Voters Handbook? Set some time aside, sit down, and read it all the way through for your own City Council voting district – marking, and ultimately ranking, the six candidates in it who most appeal to you. Then use that research to cast your votes on your mail-in ballot!
The adventure begins!
