How to Make Oregon’s Elections “Free and Equal”

Robert Close, December 4, 2024

 

Background

Oregon’s closed primary system uses taxpayer money to fund private elections for the two major political parties that comprise about 57% of the electorate. Minor political parties, comprising less than 7% of the electorate but still entitled to have candidates on the general election ballot, choose their nominees at their own expense. Over one million non-affiliated and other voters, comprising 36% of the electorate, are completely disenfranchised from the crucial primary elections that are often more competitive than general elections. Meanwhile, the state government is so polarized that the minority party has repeatedly staged walkouts to deny a quorum in the state legislature, and 13 counties have voted to succeed from the state.

Advocates for voter equality in Oregon have tried and failed twice to pass ballot measures establishing inclusive open primaries with the top two candidates advancing to a general election runoff. A persuasive argument against this approach, which is used in California and Washington, is that both candidates in the general election might be from the same party, especially if the other major party’s votes are split among many primary candidates.

On their November 2024 ballots, Portland voters were presented with a daunting array of candidates who had not been tested in primary elections: 19 candidates for mayor, and between 16 and 30 candidates vying for three seats in each of the four city council districts.  According to an analysis by the Oregonian, about 20% of voters did not rank any candidates for city council, and about 11% of voters did not rank any of the 19 candidates for mayor (nearly twice the 6% opt-out rate in 2020).

In addition, Ballot Measure 117 for statewide ranked-choice voting (RCV) failed by a large margin, with roughly 60% of voters in opposition. Both the Oregonian and Willamette Week opposed Measure 117 as an inadequate reform because it complicated voting without providing for inclusive open primaries that would allow all voters to participate equally in our democracy. A coalition of Oregon’s county clerks also opposed the measure.

Nationwide, RCV failed nearly everywhere it was on the ballot, even when coupled with inclusive open primaries (the only exceptions were Washington, D.C. and a narrowly failed attempt to repeal Alaska’s open primary system).

National opposition to RCV was fueled by Alaska’s first statewide RCV election in 2022. That election featured three candidates: Democrat Mary Peltola, and Republicans Nick Begich and Sarah Palin. In the first elimination round, Nick Begich had the fewest first-choice rankings, so was eliminated. Voters who chose Begich first had their second choices counted. In the second and final round, Sarah Palin was eliminated. Voters who chose Palin first did not have their second choices counted. That is unfair. Mary Peltola won the election with a relative majority over Palin. However, examination of ballot rankings shows that 52.5% of voters who expressed a preference between Peltola and Begich preferred Begich. A relative majority of voters also preferred Begich to Palin.

It is an undeniably bad election result when a majority of voters prefers a losing candidate to the winner.  In this case, Begich and Palin split the Republican vote. Palin was a “spoiler candidate” for Begich, who would have won if Palin had not been in the race. The fact that such a result is rare with RCV does not make it acceptable.

Proponents of RCV hailed Peltola’s victory as a success story. In reality, it was a disaster for RCV. The Republican National Committee soon adopted a  Resolution to Officially Oppose Ranked Choice Voting Across the Country.

 

Proposed Solution

Opposition to ranked-choice voting consists of four elements: (1) limited voter choices if closed primaries are used as in Oregon’s state elections, (2) too many candidates if there is no primary election as in Portland’s mayoral and city council elections, (3) complexity of the tabulation methods, and (4) lack of reliability in choosing the candidate preferred by voters.

These concerns can be addressed as follows:

(1&2)  For single-winner elections, hold Top-3 inclusive open primaries in which all candidates compete on equal terms and all voters have equal voting rights (unlike in the state’s closed primary system). Voters can select a single candidate, with three advancing to the general election. Write-in votes could be limited to this primary election since all voters can participate. By advancing three candidates to the general election, this method addresses concerns over vote-splitting that led voters to reject Top-2 primaries in 2008 and 2014.

(2&3) In a general election with three candidates, use a Three-Candidate Round Robin runoff. Each of the candidates appears on the ballot in a head-to-head matchup against each of the other candidates. By allowing voters to express preferences in three separate matchups, the ballot entry for an office would be about the same size as an existing ballot entry with six choices (candidates from five political parties plus a write-in). For example, if Christine Drazen, Betsy Johnson, and Tina Kotek had advanced out of a Top-3 primary, the ballot would have looked something like this:

Voters should express a preference in each head-to-head vote, but there is no penalty for failing to express a preference in some of the head-to-head races. The winning candidate is the one who has, or comes closest to having, majority support over each opponent. Usually, one candidate will win the election by having majority support over the other two. Otherwise, the winner is the candidate who would need the fewest additional votes to win both of their pairwise runoffs. This method guarantees that any losing candidate has the weakest possible claim that they should have won the election.

If a voter chooses the same first-choice candidate in two of the matchups, and a second-choice candidate in the third matchup, then those choices are equivalent to ranking the three candidates. Hence this method is consistent with Oregon’s constitutional provision allowing for a voter’s “indirect expression of his first, second or additional choices among the candidates for any office.” And if every voter chooses one candidate over the other two, then this method is equivalent to a simple Condorcet Minimax method, which is justified by extensive academic research (see e.g. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.01366).

 

By combining Top-3 inclusive primaries with three-candidate round robins in the general election, all Oregonians will enjoy equal primary voting rights without regard to political party affiliation, candidates from any party or no party will receive equal treatment by the state, ballots will have the familiar “vote for one” format for each pairwise matchup, and winning candidates will nearly always have majority support. This would make Oregon’s democracy truly “free and equal” as promised in the state constitution.