I have been endorsed by FairVote Washington for the Clark County Charter Review Commission!
If you don’t know about FairVote Washington they are an organization dedicated to trying to improve our election system by adopting procedures that do a better job of translating votes into seats (by more accurately reflecting the preferences of the voters). They in particular advocate for the adoption of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) here in Washington.
You might be asking then: What is my stance on Ranked Choice Voting?
- I think the election system of single-member districts (SMD) along with plurality winners (where candidates can win races with less than 50% +1 of the vote) is a bad way to go from votes to seats in government.
- Allowing plurality winners in single-member districts means that elected officials are often elected with the support of less than half of the population and that harms the legitimacy of their position and democracy overall. But in a closely divided community, there is often no candidate who can earn majority support.
- Single-member districts mean that there is only one winner per election. This means that you almost always maximize the number of people who vote against the final winning candidate and are not represented. This limits the number of voices in government and often leaves people feeling like they don’t matter if they are part of a large and persistent minority voting bloc.
- Washington has addressed this with the Top-Two Primary, which eliminates the possibility of a plurality winner in a race by eliminating choices.
- Ranked Choice Voting does address the problem of plurality winners well (as do several other reform options that seem fine to me, like STAR voting). And I think it does it better than the top-two primary because it allows for more candidates to be included on the general election ballot when turnout is higher therefore giving more people a say.
- Ranked Choice Voting does not address the problems associated with single-member districts.
- You can use Ranked Choice Voting along with other reforms to address both problems like the City of Portland is doing with having Multi-member districts and Ranked Choice Voting (or more accurately, Single Transferable Vote).
I would support attempts to improve representation in our county government by adopting reforms like Ranked Choice Voting and the adoption of multi-member districts. I think these reforms would improve representation on the county council.
However, the last Charter Review Commission did propose adopting Ranked Choice Voting and that amendment failed. So I would hesitate to present the same idea to the voters again without evidence of a significant change either in public opinion, state law, or if the amendment were substantially different from the one that failed.
I do personally think the Clark County Council would better represent the people with multi-member districts that use some method of proportional representation like ranked-choice voting/single-transferable vote. I will be entering the review process open to hearing other perspectives on why it might not be the right time or place for this kind of reform.
