Portland’s first ranked-choice vote elects progressive outsider as mayor
Portland’s first ranked-choice vote elects progressive outsider as mayor
As US electorate moves to right, Oregon city bucks trend and also elects most diverse city council in history
Hey good people get elected in a sane voting system that's weird.
First Ranked Choice vote.
Elect Progressive.
Other politicians: 'Okay that's enough RCV for America'
Colorado just shot down RCV like 60-40 and it’s infuriating
Same thing happened here in the UK years ago. "Want to make out democracy better?" "Nah, mate."
Well Oregon also voted down RCV statewide because it's just too confusing lol
The UK did this about a decade ago by a 2-to-1 margin, on the same grounds. Commentators in Australia (which have had ranked choice voting for generations) quipped that this was final proof that Australians are smarter than Brits.
I’m still pissed that Coloradans voted down RCV on the ballot this season.
The word isn't out on it yet. Not really. It's pretty academic.
Tell people it solves this problem: https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
So did the rest of Oregon and it wasn't even close. Too many people fell for the "it's too confusing" propaganda, which is just another way to call the voters dumb, but maybe they're not wrong.
Its just corporations having it both ways:
When corporations benefit: Americans can read like 900 pages of fine print a minute and are all legal scholars.
When it doesn't benefit corps: Americans are cows, its offensive you're trying to make these morons fill out multiple choice papers, they might accidentally poke out an eye on the pens.
Reality: people have limits but RCV ballots are not too complicated. We see it all the time with roundabouts. When new roundabout is put in a few drivers take some time to adjust but eventually they figure it out.
The change is harder to deal with than the actual thing.
which is just another way to call the voters dumb, but maybe they're not wrong.
Given the outcome of the federal election, I'm increasingly convinced of that point.
arg. had this discussion about how Canada voted it down a few years back also because "too confusing."
like, maybe there were too many options but I knew we needed to pick any of them instead of keeping the same bullshit system that has always required lesser of evil voting.
arg. people are so fickle and ignorant.
Meanwhile, the state initiative to pass RCV crashed and burned. :(
Probably because it was incomplete for reasons unknown. I'm not sure why, but we get really bad ballot measures. 118 was super terrible, and 117 was seemingly unfinished.
Interestingly, we had extremely low turnout in the local elections. Apparently RCV, or the sheer number of candidates (over 100 for 12 positions), or a combination of both contributed to very low turnout. There were more people voting for POTUS than any of the local candidates, which is a little disappointing. I'll dig into the numbers this weekend.
The new form of city government meant there was a significant number of candidates to parse through. And ranking several instead of picking just one favorite also added time. It took me several days to do my due diligence on all the measures and candidates when before I could usually get it all done in one.
Not complaining, though I could imagine people who don't take voting seriously easily getting impatient/overwhelmed.
Great! Next bring progressive change to Salem!
Fat chance. Kotek and the rest of the neoliberals have the state locked down.