Brandon Narramore
Narramore is an assistant property manager with an affordable housing nonprofit. He lives in Portland.
Following the historically close race for Portland mayor, there has been some frustration among progressives who believe a write-in campaign split the left-wing vote and led to the reelection of the moderate incumbent, Ted Wheeler.
While I myself am a disappointed supporter of Wheeler’s top opponent, Sarah Iannarone, I believe progressives who blame her defeat on those who urged write-in votes for activist Teressa Raiford are mistaken. Instead, they should direct their ire at our flawed electoral system, which rewards whoever emerges with the most votes – even if the winner collects less than half the number of votes cast.
Thankfully, with the upcoming city charter review, Portland will have a chance to rethink how our elections are done. Rather than criticizing Raiford supporters for voting their conscience, we should use this opportunity to adopt “ranked-choice voting” and provide Portlanders with more choices and greater democracy.
In a ranked-choice voting system, voters select as many candidates as they wish, ranking them in order of preference – first choice, second choice, third choice, etc. If there is no majority winner after elections officials count all the first-choice votes, the candidate with the lowest total is eliminated and elections officials then tally those voters' second-choice candidates. The process of elimination continues until one candidate receives more than half of the vote.
For example, let’s say Portland had ranked-choice voting for this past election and Teressa Raiford was officially on the ballot. Assume for simplicity’s sake that the vote tallies were 46% first-place votes for Wheeler, 41% for Iannarone, and 13% for Raiford. Raiford would be eliminated but all of her supporters' second-choice votes would then be tallied and transferred over to the corresponding candidate. Depending on who voters chose, those ballots could either cement Wheeler’s win or catapult Iannarone to victory.
Regardless of how the second-choice votes fall, the winner of the election would be able to claim that they received, in some form, more than 50% of the electorate’s vote. Unfortunately this is not something that the current mayor can claim.
A ranked-choice voting system would take away the concern that a less-popular candidate could play “spoiler.” We could see more serious candidates attempt campaigns and bring a more diverse set of backgrounds, ideas and policies to races. Negative campaigning would also be discouraged as candidates would need to appeal to others' supporters to secure their second-choice votes in hopes of amassing more than 50% of the vote.
Ranked-choice voting has already been successfully implemented in multiple cities including Oakland, Minneapolis, and even our east coast counterpart Portland, Maine. In Oregon, Benton County voters in 2016 adopted the method and voted under the system this year. It was also reviewed positively by City Club this past summer as part of a package of reforms designed to make Portland’s electoral system more equitable.
Democracy is better served when more candidates are able to share their vision and voters are unafraid to vote for their preferred candidate. Let’s give Portlanders more choice and adopt ranked-choice voting.
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"choice" - Google News
November 18, 2020 at 09:00PM
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Opinion: Boost democracy in Portland’s elections with ranked-choice voting - oregonlive.com
"choice" - Google News
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