On June 14 the Portland Charter Commission voted overwhelmingly (17 out of 20 Charter Commissioners) to advance a comprehensive ballot measure to Portland voters this November that would reform Portland’s elections and city government.
In preparation for the vote, staff and officials held 80 public meetings and hearings, 26 listening sessions, and almost 150 community presentations and conversations, and received over 4,000 survey responses to inform the commission’s decision.
“It has been inspiring to watch such an engaging and inclusive charter reform process,” said Jay Lee, researcher for Sightline Institute’s democracy program in Portland. “The commission’s public outreach and research has ensured a breadth of perspective and developed a depth of understanding for everyone involved. I have appreciated learning alongside commissioners as a member of the public and look forward to the conversation from now until the general election.”
Additional voices and viewpoints
The city charter ballot measure will include a move to four multi-member districts, geographic districts that each elect three city councilors through a process of proportional ranked choice voting, and a move away from the commission form of government by removing individual city councilors’ executive role in directly running city bureaus. This reform would increase the size of the city council to 12 members from its current five, which would increase the number of viewpoints represented in council discussions. Moving away from winner-take-all elections to electing multiple members proportionally in each district allows representation for groups that are not geographically concentrated, like people of color, renters or younger voters. The charter commission won’t draw the districts themselves, but the measure will include some guidelines and a process for a different body to draw the districts moving forward.
“These reforms have the potential to really transform Portland’s governance and expand access for residents who have historically been locked out of power at city hall,” noted Lee.
Because the Portland Charter Commission voted as a supermajority, the proposed ballot language will go straight to the voters this November
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There are three or more things up for change this year in Portland.
Portland is to vote on: - shift from commission style of city government to city council - for election of city council from the current at-large district to three or four districts (they would be MM districts) - from X voting to ranked choice voting. (the at-large voting for commissioner was held as four separate contests using the same at-large district, like BC MM districts did in 1952) - implicit in the call for PR ranked choice voting is to break from the tradition of casting as many votes as there are seats to fill. currently, Portland voters cast one vote in single-winner contests (separate single-winner contests in MM district) after Portland changes to three districts electing four seats each or four electing three members, if it does, under PR the voter is to also cast just one vote (although the natural impulse is to cast three or four in Block Voting). It can be seen as yes or no on the entire package or as three or four separate decisions. I hope voters vote for PR - however the question is put to them.
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For discussion sake, here's excerpt from Portland's Progress Report, a link out of the "ride with me" article, and my discussion of it.
from
On March 31, 2022, the Charter Commission reached a key milestone, preliminarily agreeing on a package of reforms to advance to voters. All 20 Charter Commission members supported the package, which would recommend three major changes: • Allowing voters to rank candidates in order of their preference, using ranked choice voting • Four new geographic districts with three members elected to represent each district, expanding the city council to a total of 12 members • A city council that focuses on setting policy and a mayor elected citywide to run the city’s day-to-day operations, with the help of a professional city administrator. I see that Portland is to vote on two or three or more reforms at once This actually is common. Lethbridge, the first city in Canada to use ranked voting (IRV), adopted IRV when it switched to the commission style of government in 1913. Portland is to vote on: - shift from commission style of city government to city council - from at-large district to three districts (they would be MM districts) - from X voting (the at-large voting was held as four separate contests using the same at-large district, like BC MM districts did in 1952) to ranked choice voting. - implicit in this is to break from the tradition of casting as many votes as there are seats to fill currently, Portland voters cast one vote in single-winner contests. after it changes to three districts electing four seats each or four electing three members, if it does, the voter is to also cast just one vote (although the natural impulse is to cast three or four). (this single voting, along with ranked voting (to avoid waste of surplus votes), I think, is the P part of "proportional representation form of ranked choice voting" as they call STV.) This single voting in MM district is actually not stated explicitly in the explanations offered. Progress Report, page 24: "Currently, voters are asked to choose one candidate. The candidate who receives the most votes, even if they receive less than 50% of the vote, is the sole person elected. No matter how many candidates are on your ballot, you only select one option, and a candidate can win no matter how small their vote share ends up. Ranked choice voting would give a Portland voter the ability to choose more than one candidate to vote for, ranking the ones they like in order of preference by marking the ballot to indicate "1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, etc." for as many as they care to offer a preference. [...]" "proportional representation form of ranked choice voting" as a descriptive term is more detailed than the term STV, but at least STV actually says "Single transferable voting" - although the single aspect of it is often overlooked and not remarked upon. It seems voters might think under "proportional representation form of ranked choice voting" they actually can vote for more than one candidate, based on how it is described in such writings. Portland's PR-RCV instructions to votes also suffers from same lack of clarity clearer instructions would be to say: The voter is asked to mark their first preference by marking a choice in the First Choice column. If the voter wants, he or she can mark additional choices, one in each of the next columns, their second choice in the Second Choice column, etc. [interesting that this style of voting uses Xs just like FPTP so it is "preferential X voting"!] That's really all the voter needs to know but you can go on to say: If the candidate marked as the first choice does not take many votes, the candidate may be eliminated from the running and a vote marked for that candidate may be moved to the candidate marked as the next choice if there is one marked. If the vote is used to elect a candidate and the candidate has a surplus of votes over and above the quota, the vote may be moved on to aid another candidate to be elected. Further explanation could read: Any candidate who gets votes equal to the quota will be declared elected. Candidates being elected and candidates being eliminated will thin the field of remaining candidates. if not all the seats are filled by the time the number of remaining candidates is lowered to the number of remaining open seats, surpassing the quota is no longer required to win a seat - just being the leading candidate(s) at that point is enough to fill the last open seats(s). That is likely more than voters need or want to know. But it explains the process Despite what Portland's instructions say or imply, candidates who get the threshold in any round are elected, not just those in the 1st Round. Having the threshold or quota is not required to win a seat in all cases. even if a candidate is elected in the 1st Round, candidate(s) will be eliminated (unless all the seats are filled in the 1st Round) although only after any surplus votes are dealt with. The last sentence seems to mix up transfers arising from elimination of an unpopular candidate with the transfer of surplus votes from elected candidates - two different things. Many things may happen to a STV vote: I purposefully used the word "may" concerning transfers and eliminations because some votes are never transferred, even some that are not used to elect someone are never transferred. Some that are transferred are not used to elect someone; and some that are never transferred are used to elect someone. There are many possibilities - but all logical and based on relative popularity or relative un-popularity.
======================================= Some candidates may be eliminated, of the others one or more will be elected to fill the seats in the district some may be eliminated. but possibly some will be neither eliminated nor elected. There are many possibilities - but all logical and based on relative popularity or relative un-popularity and based on the number of seats to fill.
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link to other article on municipal STV in U.S.
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