In 1908, Oregon voters approved a statewide ballot measure allowing proportional representation to be used in voting across the state. More than 100 years later, Portland voters used ranked choice voting for the first time, while Oregon voters overall opposed a switch to adopt ranked choice voting statewide. A new analysis from Sightline Institute looked at voting methods across the state and found that current election methods lead to a “pattern of misrepresentation.” Shannon Grimes is a senior researcher with the think tank’s democracy program. She joins us to share more on what she sees is wrong with Oregon’s current voting practices and suggestions she has to improve it.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. In 1908, Oregon voters approved a statewide ballot measure allowing proportional representation and ranked choice to be used in voting across the state. That was a constitutional amendment. Portlanders took advantage of this provision a few years ago when they completely overhauled their city charter. But more than 100 years later, residents in most cities and counties in Oregon have not opted for those kinds of systems.
Shannon Grimes is a senior researcher at the Sightline Institute. She recently looked into voting systems all around the state. She says she found a “pattern of misrepresentation” in blue and red cities and counties, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Shannon Grimes: Thanks for having me.
Miller: You started your article with examples from two different places. What happened with the Bend City Council last year?
Grimes: Bend uses one of the common methods in Oregon that tends to have kind of unrepresentative outcomes. So there are three major methods that most cities and counties in Oregon use, and they end up having governing bodies that don’t necessarily look like the populations that they’re meant to be serving. The point of having multi-member governing bodies like city councils, county commissions, also places like state legislators and the U.S. Congress is to elect a mix of people who reflect the community and can represent various community interests.
You know, a democracy that’s accountable and responsive to the people. John Adams has this quote about a legislature that looks like a portrait of the people in miniature. So we use various types of election methods to get there. Some work better than others at achieving this goal of representing the people. And what happened in Bend is that Democrat-endorsed candidates swept all seven seats on the city council. And of course, elections in Bend are technically nonpartisan, but sometimes, state partisan players have a role. And that means that anybody who is a Republican, which there are Republicans in Bend, doesn’t get a say on that city council. It doesn’t reflect the voters.
Miller: And then you found the opposite on the Jackson County Commission in Southern Oregon. What did you find when you looked there?
Grimes: In Jackson County, they sort of have the opposite representation failure. So even though Democratic or Independent candidates have won more than 40% of the vote for every county commissioner contest over the last five general elections, Republicans pretty consistently hold all three seats on the Jackson County Commission. And so the county voters are pretty split between the two major parties, Republicans and Democrats, but Democrats are consistently locked out of county policy decisions.
Miller: You talked about when you looked at the voting systems in Oregon’s 36 counties and the 50 biggest cities, you identified the three most common systems of voting and representation. The first one you identified is called “block voting,” which is very common. But it’s not something that I think a lot of folks are even familiar with. So what is block voting?
Grimes: Probably a lot of people are familiar with having it on their ballots, even if they don’t think about the name of it or they’re not familiar with the name. Block voting is used in about a third of the largest cities in Oregon, and quite a few small towns as well. So with block voting, you get the same number of votes as there are council seats up for election. So if you have a three-seat council, voters would pick three choices, and then the three with the most votes win spots on council. The trouble with this method is that whatever group or political faction has the most voters can win all of the seats. So that doesn’t get you to this ideal of reflective representation.
The number of candidates running also can play a big role in the results. So if the largest group is disciplined and only runs three candidates, they might win all three of the seats because voters are going to allocate their votes appropriately. But if, instead, there are five similar candidates running, all of those candidates might split up the votes. And then none of them win a seat.
Miller: Although I suppose that that could lead to more representation … well, not if it’s none of them. But all this gets complicated and gamified, and it’s depending on the particulars of a particular election.
OK, so that’s block voting. What about at-large positions?
Grimes: For sure. And I think all of these methods can work and often do. But they also end up often having unrepresentative outcomes. So they’re not consistent, they’re not stable. So, the number of seats or designated positions is used by almost all of Oregon counties and another (about) third of the largest cities. Similar to block voting, voters elect members of a council across a whole city or county. But then the candidates run for individual seats. So position one, position two, and so forth. Whichever candidate gets the most votes in each contest wins the seat.
This method, like block voting, can overrepresent whatever group is in the majority, because the majority of voters get to choose the winner of position one, and then they get to choose the winner of position two, and so on. And so if you have an area that is majority Democrat, say 60/40, Democrats would get to choose every position on that council. The other issue with this method is that it sets up jockeying between these different positions. Candidates might not want to run against a popular incumbent. So they leave position one totally uncontested, and then all of them crowd into position two. That means that voters get fewer real choices. So again, not always reaching that goal of elections creating a representative government.
Miller: And then the final system, which is very common, which you also find problematic is single winner wards or districts. What’s wrong with these?
Grimes: Single winner wards or districts are when a county or a city is divvied up into different sections, and then each of them elects their own representative. So single winner wards can add a degree of diversity to a council because sometimes there are geographic differences in voter opinions. But they really only work well when similarly minded people cluster together in neighborhoods. And that’s just not always the case. So, if a group of like-minded voters is perhaps scattered across a whole city, but they don’t make up a majority in any single ward, they might not win any seats on council, even if they make up a really big share of the population.
Single winner wards are also susceptible to gerrymandering. So mapmakers are drawing self-interested lines, because the district boundaries can really change who gets elected, and you’re drawing what is the population that will be in this district, who can sort of determine who gets a particular seat. When lines are drawn, often to reduce competition or to siphon people into groups, you also don’t get fair representation for the whole area, for the whole city or county as a whole.
Miller: I want to start with your examples in Jackson County and in Bend because those are bipartisan, sort of mirror image examples of where you see a lack of real representation – basically systems that have not included minority partisan voices in whether it’s the county or the city level. That’s important and notable because in the last couple of years – Portland is a good example, Benton County is another – it’s in more left leaning places in Oregon and around the country that have been more eager to try out these different ways to include more voices.
Why do you think that is? Your basic argument is that everybody could benefit from these changes. But the folks that have been pushing for it are more likely to be Democrats or progressives. Why?
Grimes: Democrats have, in recent years anyway, been a little bit more of the party of voter choice, and so I think leaning into that. There’s also a dynamic of conservatives and Republicans becoming a bit more skeptical of election reform. Part of that has to do especially with single winner ranked choice voting – and I can talk about this sort of proportional version of it in a minute. Single winner ranked choice voting got a lot of flak from Republicans when it was first used in the Alaska House race in 2022, because Democrat Mary Peltola was able to be elected, instead of two prominent Republicans that were in the race. So a lot of Republicans blamed the change in system on that.
Of course, the reform itself does not actually have a partisan bias. Republican Nick Begich is now in office. He won out over Mary Peltola in last year’s House race, also through ranked choice voting. So you see that it can work in both ways. But I think there’s this fear and perception from a lot of people, especially on the right, that it’s kind of this lefty plot.
Miller: How much do you think is riding on Portland’s experiment, the outcome of the major charter changes that voters approved a few years ago? We’re still in the first year of the new council and the very different setup of 12 folks, multi-member districts, all kinds of changes at the same time. Cities all across Oregon or all across the country could be watching what’s happening in Portland. What do you think is at stake in how this new system goes in Portland?
Grimes: I’ll back up for a second and just explain a little more about sort of what Portland is doing ...
Miller: So sure, but you have a minute-and-a-half for that, total.
Grimes: OK. Portland is using proportional representation, which is specifically designed to make sure that community interests are represented proportionally, and there’s all kinds of benefits to this that I can get into if we end up having more time. And I think for non-partisan elections, the best way to achieve proportional representation is through this multi-winner ranked choice voting. So this is what Portland is doing. So they use a combination of multi-member districts and proportional ranked choice voting. The city is split into four districts, three councilors each. Councilors are elected proportionally within each district, so this arrangement avoids the challenges of single-member districts, like I mentioned. And it means that no single group of voters can sweep all of the seats in a district like could happen with block voting or at-large numbered positions.
So to answer your question, I think that people are looking to Portland and to see how the election is effective. And I think if we look at just the voting method, actually, it was very effective at doing its job. It did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is to represent the will of the voters and elect a representative council. So we see that Portland now does have actually probably the most representative council in city history. There is a mix. Every district has a mix of genders, a mix of moderate and progressive councilors. Councilors vary in age and race, and whether they own their own home or rent. Council now is looking a lot like the city in miniature, which is one of the goals of the voting system. Voters also said that they liked the process of ranking candidates. They preferred this model to the old one.
So when you’re looking at the election system, that was really effective. I think people are also looking to see how Council is doing now. I think it’s worth recognizing that it’s a brand new council, and that’s part of the ranked choice voting multi-member districts. That was part of a bigger change to Portland city government. So it’s a brand new council. It’s a brand new mayor who is also new to politics, and they are working through defining their roles and how to work together. That would have happened regardless of what type of election system they would have used ...
Miller: Shannon Grimes, thanks very much. That’s Shannon Grimes. She’s a senior researcher at the Sightline Institute.
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