City Club of Portland: Rethinking How We Vote
A new report from the City Club of Portland, “New Government for Today’s Portland: Rethinking How We Vote,” says that Portland should adopt a voting method to increase the participation of all Portland residents and to level the playing field for candidates from historically disenfranchised communities.
Portland’s current voting system restricts equitable participation and representation: women, people of color, ethnic minorities, young people, renters, and those living outside of southwest Portland have been historically underrepresented in Portland government.
Ranked-choice voting is an option to make elections in Portland more equitable. RCV ensures that voters have more of a say in the outcome of an election and has been shown to increase diversity of representation in places where it has been implemented.
Portland’s city government needs significant reform to increase participation and expand representation for Portlanders who have been left out of decision-making for too long. When policy makers are not representative of their constituency, the decisions they make are at great risk of being detached from the interests and preferences of the people they are elected to serve.
RCV allows voters to express their preferences honestly. Ballots are not “wasted” if a voter’s preferred candidate has a low chance of winning. Negative campaigning is discouraged.
The City Club reports seek to spark debate and inspire action that would elevate the voices of all of Portland’s residents, particularly communities of color, ethnic minorities, young people, and renters, regardless of zip code, as well as those living outside of the historically well-represented southwest and inner east side.
City Club of Portland is a nonprofit, nonpartisan civic organization dedicated to community service, civic education, and leadership development, and whose mission is to inform its members and the community in public matters and to arouse in them a realization of the obligations of citizenship.
