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JUNE 22, 2023

Meyerson on TAP

Should Oregon Adopt Ranked-Choice Voting?

Not if the state's progressives and Democrats hope to be winning
elections

Ranked-choice voting is an electoral method that can be a boon to
democracy and progressive candidates-except when it's not.

Oregon appears to be on the brink of opting for that second option-the
"except when it's not" one.

This week, the largely Democratic Oregon House approved a bill (HB 2004)
that would put a measure on the 2024 ballot which, if voters approve it,
would establish a somewhat peculiar version of ranked-choice voting for
nearly all state and federal offices. The bill may be voted on as early
as today by the largely Democratic state Senate, and if passed, would
guarantee placement on that ballot.

I termed the bill "peculiar" for two reasons. The first is that it
mandates ranked-choice voting for all state and federal offices

**except** those in the legislature. That is, House members exempted
only themselves and their Senate colleagues from ranked-choice voting,
though it's themselves and their Senate colleagues, should the latter
group follow suit, who are putting the bill on the ballot. One can only
presume that, since they were elected under the current system, they
think it works just fine for them and don't want to screw with it.

But there's another, less immediately obvious reason why the bill is
peculiar. Oregon is a heavily Democratic state; its governor, U.S.
senators, and majorities of its congressional and state legislative
delegations are all Democrats, and generally liberal Democrats at that.
But due to the particulars of Oregon politics, subjecting the state's
congressional districts to ranked-choice voting could very well enable
Republicans to win seats held by Democrats and to hold onto seats that
Democrats could otherwise win.

Two of Oregon's six congressional districts are swing districts. The
Fifth District is represented by Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a
first-termer who narrowly won the seat in the 2020 election. The Sixth
Congressional District is represented by progressive Democrat Andrea
Salinas, also a first-termer who narrowly won that seat in 2020.

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Here's where ranked-choice voting could put both of those seats out of
reach for the Democrats, or at least diminish their chances for victory.
There are four minor parties with ballot status in Oregon. On the left
and in the center, respectively, there's the Working Families Party
and the Independent Party. Oregon doesn't have the kind of electoral
fusion system that New York has, under which, say, the Working Families
Party can have a separate ballot line, and if it nominates the same
candidate who's running on the Democratic Party line, the votes for
that candidate on the WFP line will be added to the candidate's votes
on the Democratic line. In Oregon, however, a Democratic candidate can
run just on one line, but can note that he or she is also the nominee of
other parties-most frequently, the WFP and the Independents.

Given the immense gulf between Democratic and Republican candidates
these days, Democratic nominees almost invariably do have the support of
those two parties. In a sense, those nominees are already the recipients
of the votes of those WFP and Independent supporters. Hence, the effect
of ranked-choice voting that would enable them to get votes from those
other parties' supporters is obviated by the fact that they already
have them.

The situation on the right side of the ballot is the polar opposite of
that. To the extreme right of the Republicans are the Libertarian and
Constitution Parties, which invariably nominate their own candidates for
office, who are distinctly

**not** also the Republican nominees. These candidates invariably win
several thousand votes. Under a ranked-choice system, voters who opt to
vote for the Constitutionalist or the Libertarian would be able to vote
for the Republican as their number two choice. In the state's two
swing districts, that could definitely help Republicans win those seats.

Consider the 2022 election in the Sixth District. There, Salinas
defeated her Republican opponent by 7,210 votes. Had that Republican
been able to add via ranked-choice voting the 6,762 votes that went to
the Constitution Party's candidate, plus the 513 votes that went to
the other minor-party candidates, Democrat Salinas would have lost the
election by 65 votes. To be sure, not all the votes of the extreme-right
parties would go to the Republican as a second choice, but this example
is illustrative of an outcome that is clearly quite possible-and one
that would shift election results rightward if ranked-choice voting is
adopted.

Ranked-choice voting is almost always a positive in party primaries, but
in general elections, it can work, like the Lord, in mysterious ways,
not all of them good (again, alas, like the Lord; see, e.g., the Book of
Job). It's not clear that Oregon Democrats have thought through the
consequences of this legislation. They had oughta', pretty damn quick.


~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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