My last word on IRV for now

After my testimony to the City Council this afternoon, and after they voted 4-0 to refer Voter-owned Elections (VOE) to the voters, I had a nice chat with Commissioner Amanda Fritz about my request for the Council to appoint a body to study voting reform possibilities like Instant-runoff Voting (IRV). I got some helpful words from Nick Fish and City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade, but it was Fritz who gave me what I think I’d call reverse encouragement.

She’s not a fan of IRV. More importantly, she’s not a fan of anything that takes attention away from the campaign to affirm VOE. On that, I’m in total agreement. It’s going to be a tough battle. Given the ignorance of voters on the issues, not to mention the misinformation that is being spread, it’s going to be a major enterprise simply getting enough voters to understand what is being proposed and why it is so important. Trying to add in another complex system like IRV would really make a hash of the campaign; I have no intention of pushing for that to happen.

But I do believe the City needs to study such options. I went into today’s hearing thinking that letting voters know the City was already studying the next step in the process — that spending money on VOE was not the only reform being considered — would help. That was naive. Most voters cannot hold two complex concepts in mind at once. Few get past the most simplistic slogans. Even if I got a wide range of agreement that looking at voting options like IRV was important, the next step is not to study those but to figure out when to broach the issue.

That “when” is not now, and I don’t think it’s this year. My conversation with Fritz helped me to see that. Plus, she’s someone I will need for an ally, and as she told me bluntly that she opposes IRV — reasons based more on the nature of Portland elections than on the process itself — I need to be in a position to have her listen to my arguments down the road. After we win this election to get VOE approved by the voters (double ownership, as she put it in casting her Yes vote), then we can move on to next steps. She suggested that the City Charter review process next year might be the right time and place; I need to do some research, but I also need to talk to Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and others who advocate for electoral reform. I don’t think we can stand pat, even with VOE. Whether it’s IRV or something else, the fact that only 25% of Portland voters bothered to cast a ballot in the primary election tells me something is wrong. We can blame the voters, we can blame the politicians, but I think the process itself requires a more intense look, one that goes past the money aspect.

But not yet.

(Not sure where Dan Saltzman was this afternoon. He obviously had more important things to do than attend a City Council hearing on this matter. Randy Leonard made a good point: a funding mechanism to go along with the vote to approve VOE would be a good idea. He didn’t present such a mechanism, so I’m not sure if that was him trying to make nice with supporters when it’s clear he’ll oppose this measure. Nick Fish didn’t actually say he supported VOE; his praise went to Fritz and Griffin-Valade for getting the referral to the voters. Sam Adams thanked them, too, quite briefly, said he voted Aye — and that was it. He said nothing at all about VOE, the process — nothing. But that was still more than Saltzman who simply skipped the hearing.)

6:15 pm Reading the Oregonian story on the budget: Saltzman is on vacation this week. He voted on the budget by phone this morning. I guess you have to take vacation at some point, so you might as well go when you don't have to show up to defend a budget everyone's going to hate. Ah yes, the leadership we've come to expect from the Shy Man.