Tag Archives: New York City Council

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Portland’s Proposed Ranked Choice Voting Reform Isn’t The Solution To Portland’s Dysfunction

Portland’s current government is a mess, for a lot of reasons.

In November, Portland voters will have an opportunity to vote on one proposed solution, presented as the following question: “Should City Administrator, supervised by Mayor, manage Portland with twelve Councilors representing four districts making laws and voters ranking candidates?”

Portland’s City Council now consists of a mayor and four commissioners, all of them elected at-large, with all of Portland’s voters eligible to vote in the race for each seat.

The proposal from Portland’s Charter Commission would remove the mayor from the council and expand the council to 12 members, three each from four geographic districts of equal population, each of which would be elected using ranked choice voting. An independent commission would determine the four district boundaries after the vote on the ballot question. 

With only 8% of Portland voters saying the city is headed in the right direction and 82% of Multnomah County residents being either somewhat or very worried about the future of their part of the state. there may be an inclination to support a radical change out of sheer frustration. But the commission’s solution isn’t the answer.

Expanding the City Council to 12 members is likely to make it more unwieldy, not less. Though, thankfully, the Charter Commission was somewhat restrained, not choosing an even bigger expansion, such as the 51-member City Council with which New York City is blessed.

The particular weakness of the commission’s proposal, though, is its reliance on a needlessly complex new system of ranked choice voting (RCV). In setting on this proposal, the Charter Commission shows itself to have been populated by naive zealots advocating change for change’s sake.

There are lot of ways to organize and count votes. Most of us are used to the simple proposition that the person with the most votes wins. 

“This system is the norm from grade school elections for class president to congressional elections, “Jeff Gill and Jason wrote in a Statistical Science article about voting. “However, not only is this merely one of many possible “democratic” procedures. it is also not the only system currently used in political life in the United States and around the world.”

RCV is one of those voting options.

In RCV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If there are a lot of candidates, as there might be under the Charter Commission’s proposal, voters need to have a high level of information about all of them in order to choose preferences. You can’t just vote for the person and ideas you like. You must also educate yourself about all the other candidates in order to elevate, or dismiss, the ones you don’t.

Voters in RCV can identify their first choice, the next best and so on as they work their way down the list. If one of the candidates gets more than 50% of the first-choice votes in the first count, that candidate wins. If nobody gets a majority, there’s an “instant runoff” where the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and voters who had chosen that candidate as their first choice have their second choice counted instead. This process continues until one of the candidates gets more than half of the vote. 

Yep, it’s complicated. Too complicated. And prone to undesireable results.

For example, don’t assume RCV will always select a majority winner. In cases of what’s called “ballot exhaustion,” a voter’s preferences are eliminated so none of them are carried forward. In other words, the candidate who ends up with a majority of votes is elected with only the remaining ballots, rather than all the original ballots, meaning a winner can have fewer than half the votes of the original ballots.

The Center for Election Science says RCV’s weakness is particularly noticeable in competitive elections where more than two candidates have significant support. 

The center cited a Louisiana election in which there were three candidates. The vote mainly split between the three candidates, but it led to the elimination of the more moderate candidate who would have won in a two-candidate race against either of the other two. That sent the two more controversial candidates to the second round. 

“…with competitive elections there’s a tendency to squeeze out the center candidate,” the Center said, “which would favor more extreme candidates …”

There are even situations with RCV where ranking a candidate higher can hurt that candidate and ranking a candidate lower can help that candidate. This occurrence, happened in a 2009 election in Burlington, VT.

There, conservatives ranked their favorite candidate first and it got them their least favorite candidate as the winner. Had these conservative voters instead tactically placed their favorite candidate as second, then they would have gotten a much better outcome.

Bear with me as I explain. 

In the 2009 Burlington mayoral race, there were five candidates. The counts resulted in the following:

1st Round2nd Round3rd Round (Final)
Kiss (Progressive)2585 (29%)29814313
Wright (Republican)2951 (33%)32944061
Montroll (Democrat)2063 (23%)2554
Smith (Independent)1306 (15%)
Simpson (Green)35 (0.4%)
Write-Ins36 (0.4%)
Votes in Burlington, VT Mayoral election

According to the preferences stated by the voters on their ballots, however, if Democrat Montroll had gone head-to-head with either Progressive Kiss or Republican Wright (or anybody else) in a two-man race, he would be mayor. 

Montroll would have been favored over Wright 56% to 44% (a 930-vote margin) and over Kiss 54% to 46% (590-vote margin), majorities in both cases. 

In other words, in voting terminology, Montroll was a “beats-all winner” and a fairly convincing one. However, in this RCV election, Montroll came in third! And Kiss beat Wright in the final RCV round with 51.5% (252-vote official margin).

Confusing, yes, but real.

Another troublesome and risky situation can arise if a voter’s preferred candidate is neither a clear loser nor a clear winner. In such a case, ranking your favorite as first risks getting a bad candidate elected. And that bad candidate gets elected by RCV eliminating a superior compromise candidate too early.

Voters in this in-between state can either rank their favorite first and risk a bad candidate winning or not rank their favorite first, depriving that candidate of  much-needed support. Both of these outcomes are bad.

RCV can also founder when voters, because they are unfamiliar with all the candidates or simply by choice, vote only for their preferred candidate, ignoring the opportunity to rank the rest. 

The fact is, the more people a voter ranks the longer a ballot works for the voter. If there are five people on a ballot, you vote for only one and that one is eliminated in the instant runoff, your ballot is exhausted and has no impact on the race. It simply won’t factor into the final outcome.

On the other hand, pressure to rank all the candidates can lead to support for somebody the voter despises. In RCV, your vote for a candidate you hate can help that candidate move up. 

The fact is RCV is a solution in search of a problem. It’s simply too complex and unwieldy for voters to be asked to vote it up or down as part of a wide-ranging rearrangement of Portland’s city government.

Vote “No” on the Charter Commission’s proposal on the November 8, 2022 ballot..

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If Kristof Can Do It, So Can I

Gov. Abbott will pick the Texas secretary of state, who gets vast new powers from GOP elections bill

ADDENDUM, Feb. 17, 2022 – The Oregonian reported on Feb. 17, 2022, that Oregon’s Democratic primary race for governor narrowed significantly, with the state Supreme Court ruling that former New York Times columnist Nick Kristof can’t run because he does not meet the state’s three-year residency requirement. The court’s unanimous ruling leaves former House Speaker Tina Kotek and state Treasurer Tobias Read as frontrunners for May’s Democratic primary, which will also feature a long list of lesser-known candidates.

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If the New York City Council can approve a bill allowing 800,000 non-citizen New Yorkers to vote in municipal elections, surely Oregon can bend its rules to let Nicholas Kristof run for governor.

Oregon already has made it clear it has no problem with one of its U.S. Senators living for extended periods in New York City in a $8.6 million 19th century townhouse.

Kristof, who was born in Chicago, has lived in Yamhill, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and New York City. He was registered to vote in New York from 2000 until December 2020 and voted there as recently as November 2020. He only registered as an Oregon voter on Dec. 28, 2020.  

But let’s be honest. Other politicians have maneuvered around election residency requirements.

In 2010, then-former-senator Dan Coats was trying to win back his old seat in Indiana  when it was reported that even though he was from the state, he’d been living and voting in Virginia since 2000. But, as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say on Saturday Night Live, “Never mind.” Coats won the election anyway. 

Richard Lugar served as a U.S. Senator representing Indiana from 1977 to 2013, even though he sold his Indianapolis house in 1977 and moved to Washington, D.C. His excuse? He told reporters he and his wife wanted to keep their family together and they couldn’t afford two houses.

Even though Kristof has moved around a lot, in a statement posted on Twitter on Jan. 6, 2022, he said he owes his “entire existence” to Oregon.  “This state welcomed my dad as a refugee, and he put down roots here,” he wrote. “Oregon has provided a home to me and my family as those roots deepened. Because I have always known Oregon to be my home, the law says that I am qualified to run for governor.”

Kristof has also put forward an opinion from William Riggs, a justice on the Oregon Supreme Court from 1998 to 2006, saying Kristof is an Oregon resident because he has frequently described Yamhill as “home” and has always considered himself an Oregonian. 

“Candidate’s conduct over decades and in recent years, as well as his description of Oregon as ‘home’ in contemporaneous writings, leaves no doubt that he has considered Oregon to be his home; in these circumstances, having voted in New York does not indicate otherwise,” Riggs wrote.

I’m so convinced by the logic of Kristof’s arguments that I’m thinking of running for governor of Connecticut.

All gubernatorial candidates in Connecticut must be:

  • at least 30 years old
  • a registered voter
  • a resident of Connecticut for at least six months on the day of the election

I’m way past 30 years old. OK, I first registered to vote in Colorado when I was 18 and I’ve been a registered voter in Oregon since 1984, but I can change that to Connecticut in a wink. And as far as being a resident of Connecticut for at least six months on the day of the next election, I’ve considered Wallingford, CT my “home” from the time I was born. 

Ask anybody about my connections to Connecticut. They go back a long way.

In 1833, at the age of 20, a fellow named William of Scotland departed from the port of Greenock and embarked on a voyage to America on the ship “Moscow”, a 461-ton, 80 HP Iron Screw Steamer built by Palmer Brothers of New Castle. A tempestuous six weeks later, the ship docked in New York City. On July 9, 1838, William married Mary Hall, 29, and in 1842 they built a home in Wallingford, CT where they lived for the rest of their lives.

After Mary died in 1845, William married Temperance Hall. They had a son, Theodore. When William died in 1872 his children sent away to Scotland for red Scotch granite for his monument, which still stands in Wallingford’s Center Street Cemetery.

Theodore became one of the foremost leaders of the engineering profession in Connecticut. He married and had a son, William, who later became Superintendent of Wallingford Water Works. After William married Helen, they had a son, William, my father. Except for when he lived in Washington, D.C. as a Navy officer during WWII, he lived his entire life in Wallingford, I was raised in Wallingford, too, living on N. Main St. until I went to college. 

I have other strong ties to Connecticut, too. I’m a descendent through marriage of Samuel Andrews, one of the founders of Wallingford in 1670, and of Lyman Hall, who was born in Wallingford in 1724 and later signed the Declaration of Independence. 

So, with all this, I figure I owe my “entire existence” to Connecticut and it is as much my “home” as Oregon is Kristof’s.

One more thing.

On. January 14, Kristof’s lawyers filed their first brief to the Oregon Supreme Court. Stretching their argument about as far as possible, the brief argued that denying Kristof, who has lived in lots of places, a spot on the ballot would disenfranchise other Oregonians who have lived in lots of places.

“There are many peripatetic Oregonians who, for various reasons, live in more than one place and may prefer candidates who understand the experience of living in multiple places or changing residences often,” the brief says. “Such Oregonians come from all walks of life: houseless and housing-insecure persons; university students; seasonal migrant workers; servicemembers; snowbirds; the list goes on. These groups are disserved by the Secretary’s interpretation, contravening the spirit of free and equal elections.”

I haven’t yet set up a website for my gubernatorial race, but I plan to let all my celebrity, journalism and Washington, D.C. friends know that they should start setting aside some big bucks to contribute to my campaign. I may not be able get money from Angelina Jolie, who has given to Kristof, but Kim Novak stayed at a house next to mine in Wallingford when she was performing at a local musical theater when I was a kid and I met the actress Tuesday Weld once in California. Maybe I could hit them up for some cash.

Are you with me?