It's rank, all right – Part 3
Now that I think I understand how the votes are going to be counted in Portland's upcoming mayoral race, I thought it might be a good time to sit down and figure out how the races for the 12 new City Council seats are going to be decided. But now that I look at the rules, they're so ridiculous that I'm not sure I'm going to bother. I have better things to do with my time.
My neighborhood association newspaper explains it this way, dumbing it down quite a bit:
But the devil is in the details, and oh boy, are there ever details. The new language in the city charter is pretty wicked in and of itself:
Councilors of each district are elected using a proportional method of ranked choice voting known as single transferable vote. This method provides for the candidates to be elected on the basis of a threshold. The threshold is determined by the number of seats to be filled plus one, so that the threshold is the lowest number of votes a candidate must receive to win a seat such that no more candidates can win election than there are seats to be filled. In the initial round, the number of first rankings received by each candidate is the candidate’s vote count. Candidates whose vote counts are at least the threshold are declared elected. Votes that counted for elected candidates in excess of the threshold are called surplus. If fewer candidates are elected in the initial round than there are seats to be filled, the surplus percentage of all votes for the candidates who received a surplus are transferred to the next-highest ranked candidates in proportion to the total numbers of next-highest rankings they received on the ballots that counted for the elected candidate. If, after all surpluses have been counted in a round, no additional candidates have a vote count that is at least the threshold, the candidates with the lowest vote counts are successively eliminated in rounds and their votes are counted as votes for the candidates who are ranked next highest on the ballots that had been counted for the eliminated candidates, until another candidate has a vote count that is at least the threshold or until the number of candidates remaining equals the number of seats that have not yet been filled. The process of transferring surpluses of elected candidates and eliminating candidates continues until all positions are elected.
And when the poor souls who actually run the elections had to draft up rules to put in the city code, it got even worse. Look at this miserable thing!
Apologies for the crooked margins. The city web page that displays the law in html format is so bad that it doesn't even show the fractions properly, and so I'm forced to cut and paste from a pdf file of an exhibit to the ordinance that passed, enacting this insane rule. The fact that the elections code web page is wrong shows you that nobody should take this foolishness too seriously.
And so do I bother going through a tedious hypothetical scenario with this? The only sane reaction to it is to get it repealed as soon as possible. But that's going to take a citizen initiative, I'm afraid, because the next City Council will be the ones who will have won this ludicrous game. They'll fight to keep it.
Guess what, and by the way: Any election system that can't be understood by 99 percent of the electorate is not democracy. I'm not sure I want to normalize it by explaining it any further.
Some scams are punishable by laws. This one seems to reward the perps.
ReplyDeleteThe votes on the bozo bus go round and round and round and round and round...
ReplyDeleteIt is ludicrous to assume that any of the carefully-selected progressives on the charter commission were capable of writing the above--much less thinking it up in the first place.
ReplyDeleteSo where did this word-salad first get tossed? Best guess: somewhere out east with Soros money footing the bill.
I have yet to encounter anyone who understands this stuff--and an "entrance exam" for any council candidate should be for them to explain how the voting scheme will work and then allow the audience to vote on whether said candidate actually accomplished that mission.
I return to the one thing every voter MUST understand: Do not rank anyone you don't want to win. Especially in the council races.
Rule #2: do not rank any politician who had the power to appoint members of the charter commission, or were members of the commission, or who endorsed the charter vote. That should clear away the deadwood.
Keep in mind that one of the city council candidates -- Candace Avalos -- received a Soros Unicorn grant (don't ask how much). And, she served on the Charter Committee that cooked up Portland's new City Council and its version of Ranked Choice Voting.
Delete“Soros” is such an overused and unsupported statement and if he is such an influential person what to make of the Koch brothers?
DeleteSoros this, Soros that, when the Fox watchers start in with it, I immediately tune out.
DeleteWhat if a non-Fox watcher starts in with it? Or do you think only "Fox watchers" keep up with the political machinations of George Soros, who's had some success in Portland. Not too sure how much success the Koch brothers have had in Progland.
DeleteJack: In journalism circles (even at the Oregonian) it's a tradition to credit other outlets who break a story first. You might have noted that PortlandDissent.com first ran the opaque description lifted above (and the weird formula) three times--June 1, Sept. 2, Oct. 5, 2022--all before the vote.
DeleteBut, as is said, better late than never.
The real fun will start when the result of a close race is challenged by someone who didn't make it.
ReplyDeletePart of me thinks that this scheme is of questionable constitutionality. But I'm no election lawyer. And what I do know is that the judges around here don't make waves.
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