For those who have trouble parsing this unnecessarily complex jumble, here’s what I think the author is trying to say.
1. A candidate wins a seat by getting a bit more than 25% of the vote. If a candidate gets more than they need, the extra votes don't get thrown away; they pass along to whoever those voters ranked next. When a candidate is eliminated for having too few votes, their voters' ballots also pass to the next choice. So the election isn't decided by who gets the most first-choice votes. It's decided by where votes go after the first round.
2. If a group of like-minded voters ranks a short, agreed-upon list of candidates in the same order, their votes keep flowing to each other and rarely get wasted. If you walk in alone, rank three people you happen to like, and all three get eliminated, your ballot just dies. Organized voters get more out of the same ballot than unorganized voters do.
3. What made the DSA/Working Families slate different was two things. First, they published a short ranking guide that worked in all four districts, while the other groups' lists were too long (27 endorsements in one case) to concentrate votes. Second, they're a permanent organization rather than a seasonal one. The business coalition organizes for an election and then goes home; the DSA meets year-round. Under this voting system, the group that wastes the fewest votes wins, and the full-time group is best at that.
Dave, thank you. Your three points are exactly right, and compressed better than I managed. Readers who find the arithmetic heavy should start with your summary, then come back for the exhibits. I did give fair warning in the second paragraph: the answer is dense because it is arithmetic, and arithmetic does not summarize. You have now proved me wrong on that last part, so I am in your debt.
It wouldn't have been possible without your post, which was extremely valuable. It did take me some time to decipher which is why I shared my own parsing of it. I am looking forward to your prescriptions. We need clarity in this election and we need it badly
Thank you Robert, this was really insightful. As you point out, the difference between tightly bound candidates who are DSA members (Morillo and Koyama-Lane in D3) and those in D4 (Zimmerman and Clark) is that Zimmerman and Clark think for themselves, independently. Contrast that with the DSA candidates, who have taken a pledge to vote as a caucus, and attend monthly meetings where it is decided how they will vote, in lock step.
It's those lock step votes and disinclination to treat colleagues outside of the DSA bubble respectfully that has created the friction on council. Eli Arnold, running in D4, fits in the Zimmerman/Clark mold (independent, works well with others) and nearly everyone I have spoken with hopes he can unseat DSA candidate Mitch Green.
I think Mitch Green is vulnerable, D4 voters now have a two-year voting record to have opinions about, and a better understanding of what the Democratic Socialists of America are trying to accomplish. Last night, Max Steele, of the Recalibrate Portland substack, linked to 10,000 tweets Green made before running for office. Here's a sample of what Green wrote (December 2020):
“When I say “defund the police”, what I really mean is abolish policing. For me it’s short-hand for a step in that larger demand. I certainly do not mean reform police, because I actually want to do away with the institution altogether.”
I think it will be hard to reach 25% +1 with a trove of tweets like that. And a Clark/Zimmerman/Arnold win becomes more likely with every passing revelation. (BTW, I strongly support Zimmerman and Clark--with my wallet, my time, and with the troika of yard signs in my front yard.)
Lisa, thank you, and one precision I owe the record. The documents show the twice-monthly meetings and the caucus; they do not show votes being assigned there. I print the first and count the second, and the counting is coming. On November: this series reads ballots, it does not rank candidates. The plan in next week's piece belongs to any group of voters in any lane who wants to use it.
Portland created a council whose offices are formally nonpartisan, but adopted an election system that gives organized political groups a strong reason to coordinate candidates, endorsements and rankings. That may be the most important lesson from this article. The old political rules no longer apply.
There is an important limit: political organizations do not control how people rank their ballots. Their strategy works only if enough voters follow the suggested slate. Voters can still cross ideological lines, change the recommended order or rank only candidates they personally support.
The result is that groups that organize well, build coalitions and persuade voters to rank candidates consistently will have an advantage. If moderates or any other coalition wants significant influence on the council, simply running individual candidates may no longer be enough. They need to organize and compete under the system Portland has created. The old system is gone.
That also raises a fair question about complexity. The ballot itself may be easy enough to use, but understanding the 25% threshold, surplus transfers, ballot exhaustion and the advantage of coordinated rankings is much harder. The concern is not that voters are incapable of understanding the system, but that organized political groups may understand its strategic possibilities much better than the average voter.
On the basis of long experience, the Portland voter is easily distracted, unengaged, and--in a growing percentage--the progeny of a crap educational system.
Scott, you have written next week's opening argument, and I will credit you for it. Your limit is exactly right: the guide does not control ballots. Barely 1 to 4 percent of voters copied the DSA's guide completely, and the ladder worked anyway, because it organized preferences voters already held. And your last paragraph, the gap between what organized groups understand about this system and what the average voter understands, is precisely the problem the next article exists to solve.
Robert, I slogged through your essay. Fortunately, Lisa Cabarello and Dave Gray and Scott Spencer understood the format of rank-choice voting and the means by which candidates can assemble not only coalitions but also deliver voting instructions. Wow, I am new to Portland and recognize that this voting playing field is what will determine the results of November's elections.
Perhaps I am not alone in trying to understand how to best execute my choices and I look forward to your next essay.
Portland voters seem to have been left adrift by the economic forces (investor-capitalists) that built this city. I wonder if us dwellers (and not builders) can reclaim its beneficial economic history and push the DSA-types aside.
Marc, you are not alone and you are not adrift. You did the one thing this system rewards: you kept reading until the mechanics made sense. Next week's piece is written for exactly your question, how a voter who walks in alone stops playing alone. Hold your choices until you have seen it.
I spent 27 Substack posts trying to get my hands around the travesty that Meieir & Co, along with a commission of useful (and malevolent) idiots were concocting. This article explains it all, in ways that reminded me that I got a D in arithmetic in 4th grade.
It's not like the revolutionaries weren't telling us--it was engineered to put "minorities" into office, as they proclaimed, buried deep inside every one of the commission's "Progress Reports." It was there, almost an afterthought, after the more inflammatory "racial" category--it was the Age of Floyd--as, "by the way, minority parties." Even as they kept the campaign "non-partisan." Joke's on us.
I doubt that 1-percent of the city's voters will labor through these extraordinary documents, which is why the mandarins wrote the charter in the first place. But we can hope that the few reform coalitions in town will think long and hard about Mr. Miller's work--especially two points: spend money where it counts, and don't go back home.
Richard, thank you, and the Curley Effect is a real citation: Glaeser and Shleifer put a name to the practice of shaping the electorate itself. Your two takeaways are the whole sermon. Spend money where it counts, and do not go home. On the voters, though, I will not grade them. Three of every four played alone because nobody handed them the program. That is a distribution failure, not an intelligence failure, and it is fixable.
Portland's new STV election system is a major breakthrough, but the pro-STV case has become muddled. People seem to think the system was designed to skew the council left. Robert's point is that opponents of Portland's Peacock/DSA caucus can respond strategically. The District 4 election this fall could show how.
The city's leadership needs to remind everyone why the new system makes sense: proportionality, the advantages of more council members with a reasonably small number of districts, the elimination of the primary election, the end of wasted votes, and the power of individual voters the ability to say more. The mess made by DSA members and the Peacocks should not threaten this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Ian, we agree more than you may expect. The piece says it plainly: not repeal. The math is honest, and it protected voters in ways the old system never did. Droop built his system so ordinary voters would not need a machine; the answer to one organized bloc is more organized blocs, which is the proportionality promise fulfilled, not abandoned. The people who love this system should be the loudest teachers of it. That is next week's subject.
While I appreciate the focus on this topic, I do wish it was not written by AI.
For those who have trouble parsing this unnecessarily complex jumble, here’s what I think the author is trying to say.
1. A candidate wins a seat by getting a bit more than 25% of the vote. If a candidate gets more than they need, the extra votes don't get thrown away; they pass along to whoever those voters ranked next. When a candidate is eliminated for having too few votes, their voters' ballots also pass to the next choice. So the election isn't decided by who gets the most first-choice votes. It's decided by where votes go after the first round.
2. If a group of like-minded voters ranks a short, agreed-upon list of candidates in the same order, their votes keep flowing to each other and rarely get wasted. If you walk in alone, rank three people you happen to like, and all three get eliminated, your ballot just dies. Organized voters get more out of the same ballot than unorganized voters do.
3. What made the DSA/Working Families slate different was two things. First, they published a short ranking guide that worked in all four districts, while the other groups' lists were too long (27 endorsements in one case) to concentrate votes. Second, they're a permanent organization rather than a seasonal one. The business coalition organizes for an election and then goes home; the DSA meets year-round. Under this voting system, the group that wastes the fewest votes wins, and the full-time group is best at that.
Dave, thank you. Your three points are exactly right, and compressed better than I managed. Readers who find the arithmetic heavy should start with your summary, then come back for the exhibits. I did give fair warning in the second paragraph: the answer is dense because it is arithmetic, and arithmetic does not summarize. You have now proved me wrong on that last part, so I am in your debt.
It wouldn't have been possible without your post, which was extremely valuable. It did take me some time to decipher which is why I shared my own parsing of it. I am looking forward to your prescriptions. We need clarity in this election and we need it badly
Thank you Robert, this was really insightful. As you point out, the difference between tightly bound candidates who are DSA members (Morillo and Koyama-Lane in D3) and those in D4 (Zimmerman and Clark) is that Zimmerman and Clark think for themselves, independently. Contrast that with the DSA candidates, who have taken a pledge to vote as a caucus, and attend monthly meetings where it is decided how they will vote, in lock step.
It's those lock step votes and disinclination to treat colleagues outside of the DSA bubble respectfully that has created the friction on council. Eli Arnold, running in D4, fits in the Zimmerman/Clark mold (independent, works well with others) and nearly everyone I have spoken with hopes he can unseat DSA candidate Mitch Green.
He has a mathematical chance of unseating Zimmerman. Good luck.
I think Mitch Green is vulnerable, D4 voters now have a two-year voting record to have opinions about, and a better understanding of what the Democratic Socialists of America are trying to accomplish. Last night, Max Steele, of the Recalibrate Portland substack, linked to 10,000 tweets Green made before running for office. Here's a sample of what Green wrote (December 2020):
“When I say “defund the police”, what I really mean is abolish policing. For me it’s short-hand for a step in that larger demand. I certainly do not mean reform police, because I actually want to do away with the institution altogether.”
I think it will be hard to reach 25% +1 with a trove of tweets like that. And a Clark/Zimmerman/Arnold win becomes more likely with every passing revelation. (BTW, I strongly support Zimmerman and Clark--with my wallet, my time, and with the troika of yard signs in my front yard.)
Lisa, thank you, and one precision I owe the record. The documents show the twice-monthly meetings and the caucus; they do not show votes being assigned there. I print the first and count the second, and the counting is coming. On November: this series reads ballots, it does not rank candidates. The plan in next week's piece belongs to any group of voters in any lane who wants to use it.
Portland created a council whose offices are formally nonpartisan, but adopted an election system that gives organized political groups a strong reason to coordinate candidates, endorsements and rankings. That may be the most important lesson from this article. The old political rules no longer apply.
There is an important limit: political organizations do not control how people rank their ballots. Their strategy works only if enough voters follow the suggested slate. Voters can still cross ideological lines, change the recommended order or rank only candidates they personally support.
The result is that groups that organize well, build coalitions and persuade voters to rank candidates consistently will have an advantage. If moderates or any other coalition wants significant influence on the council, simply running individual candidates may no longer be enough. They need to organize and compete under the system Portland has created. The old system is gone.
That also raises a fair question about complexity. The ballot itself may be easy enough to use, but understanding the 25% threshold, surplus transfers, ballot exhaustion and the advantage of coordinated rankings is much harder. The concern is not that voters are incapable of understanding the system, but that organized political groups may understand its strategic possibilities much better than the average voter.
On the basis of long experience, the Portland voter is easily distracted, unengaged, and--in a growing percentage--the progeny of a crap educational system.
Scott, you have written next week's opening argument, and I will credit you for it. Your limit is exactly right: the guide does not control ballots. Barely 1 to 4 percent of voters copied the DSA's guide completely, and the ladder worked anyway, because it organized preferences voters already held. And your last paragraph, the gap between what organized groups understand about this system and what the average voter understands, is precisely the problem the next article exists to solve.
Thanks, I look forward to reading your next article
Robert, I slogged through your essay. Fortunately, Lisa Cabarello and Dave Gray and Scott Spencer understood the format of rank-choice voting and the means by which candidates can assemble not only coalitions but also deliver voting instructions. Wow, I am new to Portland and recognize that this voting playing field is what will determine the results of November's elections.
Perhaps I am not alone in trying to understand how to best execute my choices and I look forward to your next essay.
Portland voters seem to have been left adrift by the economic forces (investor-capitalists) that built this city. I wonder if us dwellers (and not builders) can reclaim its beneficial economic history and push the DSA-types aside.
I would refer you to the "Curley Effect," a political machine that sees driving away potential opponents as a benefit to entrenched incumbents.
Marc, you are not alone and you are not adrift. You did the one thing this system rewards: you kept reading until the mechanics made sense. Next week's piece is written for exactly your question, how a voter who walks in alone stops playing alone. Hold your choices until you have seen it.
I spent 27 Substack posts trying to get my hands around the travesty that Meieir & Co, along with a commission of useful (and malevolent) idiots were concocting. This article explains it all, in ways that reminded me that I got a D in arithmetic in 4th grade.
It's not like the revolutionaries weren't telling us--it was engineered to put "minorities" into office, as they proclaimed, buried deep inside every one of the commission's "Progress Reports." It was there, almost an afterthought, after the more inflammatory "racial" category--it was the Age of Floyd--as, "by the way, minority parties." Even as they kept the campaign "non-partisan." Joke's on us.
I doubt that 1-percent of the city's voters will labor through these extraordinary documents, which is why the mandarins wrote the charter in the first place. But we can hope that the few reform coalitions in town will think long and hard about Mr. Miller's work--especially two points: spend money where it counts, and don't go back home.
Richard, thank you, and the Curley Effect is a real citation: Glaeser and Shleifer put a name to the practice of shaping the electorate itself. Your two takeaways are the whole sermon. Spend money where it counts, and do not go home. On the voters, though, I will not grade them. Three of every four played alone because nobody handed them the program. That is a distribution failure, not an intelligence failure, and it is fixable.
Portland's new STV election system is a major breakthrough, but the pro-STV case has become muddled. People seem to think the system was designed to skew the council left. Robert's point is that opponents of Portland's Peacock/DSA caucus can respond strategically. The District 4 election this fall could show how.
The city's leadership needs to remind everyone why the new system makes sense: proportionality, the advantages of more council members with a reasonably small number of districts, the elimination of the primary election, the end of wasted votes, and the power of individual voters the ability to say more. The mess made by DSA members and the Peacocks should not threaten this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Ian, we agree more than you may expect. The piece says it plainly: not repeal. The math is honest, and it protected voters in ways the old system never did. Droop built his system so ordinary voters would not need a machine; the answer to one organized bloc is more organized blocs, which is the proportionality promise fulfilled, not abandoned. The people who love this system should be the loudest teachers of it. That is next week's subject.
Hoping we get rid of rank choice ASAP. One candidate per district.