Summary
Oregon Measure 117 would establish a rank-choice voting system in general elections for non-legislative offices, including the president, U.S. senator, U.S. representative, governor, secretary of state, attorney general, state treasurer, and commissioner of labor and industries.
Currently, federal and state general elections in Oregon follow a plurality vote system, wherein the candidate receiving the most votes, but not necessarily a majority is determined the winner through a single round of voting.
Under rank-choice voting, voters rank their preferred candidates rather than selecting one candidate to receive their votes. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. That candidate’s votes are then redistributed based on voters’ ranked preferences. This process is repeated until one candidate receives a majority of the votes. This iterative process of elimination and reallocation of ranked votes is sometimes referred to as an “instant runoff.”
Cities, counties, school districts, other local governments, and local districts would be authorized to use ranked-choice voting for local elections unless home rule charters preempt it. Elections for state legislative offices would continue to follow the current plurality voting system.
Fiscal Impact
The Oregon ranked-choice voting for federal and state elections measure will likely have a negative fiscal impact, although the precise costs of implementation are unknown. Oregon’s Financial Estimate Committee produced the state’s official fiscal impact analysis for the measure. According to the committee’s analysis, the measure is estimated to cost the state government $0.9 million from 2023 to 2025 due to additional staffing and consulting services needed for implementation. From 2025 to 2027, state government costs will increase to $5.6 million and include costs for public outreach and IT needs. Additionally, the County Clerks estimate $2.3 million in initial expenditures by local governments to improve technology, train staff, and test the new system. Local governments will also face ongoing costs, including $1.8 million for printing and logistics in every statewide election. Software and maintenance contracts are estimated to cost local governments $0.4 million annually.
Proponents’ Arguments
Measure 117 was referred to the ballot by the Oregon State Legislature and the campaign in support of the measure is directed by Oregon Ranked Choice Voting Advocates. Supporters argue that ranked-choice voting is more representative of voter preferences than plurality systems because candidates must secure support from a majority of voters to win. As Oregon House Speaker Dan Rayfield (D-16) stated:
Ranked choice voting will give voters more choice, encourage voter engagement, and strengthen our democracy by improving peoples’ perception of elections and election outcomes. House Bill 2004 would make sure people in power are elected by a true 50% majority.
Supporters also argue that ranked-choice voting gives voters more choice because they don’t need to worry about spoiler effects from minor party candidates. In written testimony, Emily Hawley with the American Civil Liberties Union––Oregon argued that “[b]y mitigating concerns of “splitting the vote,” ranked choice voting allows a broader—and more representative—range of candidates and, ultimately, elected officials.”
Opponents’ Arguments
Opponents of the measure argue that ranked-choice voting would make elections too complicated and that voters could be confused by the new system. For example, State Rep. E. Werner Reschke (R-55) argued:
Today, too many Oregonians are intimidated by the length of their ballot and do not understand the meaning of all the races and ballot measures. Why would we want to make the ballot even longer and more complicated with more choices? Ranked Choice voting could very well discourage voting because ballots could end up being multiple pages long.
The Oregon Association of County Clerks raised objections to the measure, citing the logistical complexity and fiscal impact of implementing a ranked-choice voting system. In written testimony opposing the legislature’s referral of the measure, the Association cited the following reasons for its position:
- RCV makes for a more complicated primary.
- Reconciling RCV between multiple counties is complicated and will remove final tallying from county election officials.
- The difficult task placed on Election Officials seeking to reconcile the number of ballots accepted and tallied when multiple ballot pages/sheets are sent to each voter (many voters only return the ballot pages with the contests that are of interest to them).
- There are substantial costs involved with implementing RCV.
- Current public confidence in elections is low, and the complications involved with RCV have the potential to fuel conspiracy theories and allegations related to a lack of transparency.
Finally, opponents of the measure have cited the contested results from a 2022 special election for Alaska’s congressional district. In that election, Mary Peltola (D) beat former Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and Nick Begich (R) in a three-way race. Beglich was eliminated in the first round of vote tabulation because he received the fewest votes. Peltola won against Palin in the second round of vote tabulation after reallocating 2nd choice votes from voters who ranked Beglich first. If Palin voters had instead ranked Beglich as their first choice, he likely would have won in a one-to-one race against Peltola. Critics, therefore, argue that ranked-choice voting did not prevent the two Republican candidates from splitting the party’s vote, allowing Peltola to gain a majority. In particular, critics point to 11,000 ballots that were disqualified in the second round because voters only indicated their top preference. As Sara Wolk, executive director of the Equal Vote Coalition, argued:
[D]espite claims that the problem had been solved, the election was spoiled by Sarah Palin, flipping the seat blue rather than electing the moderate Republican who was preferred over all others according to the ballots cast. For Palin voters, ranking her 1st choice actually backfired and ironically helped elect their last choice instead. In Oregon a similar spoiler effect scenario could easily flip a seat from Blue to Red.
Discussion
Ranked-choice voting is an effective alternative to plurality vote systems for offering voters more choices. Because ranked-choice voting reduces the risk of spoiler effects, it allows voters to cast votes for minor party candidates without fear of “wasting their vote.” There is some evidence that minor party candidates experience more support under ranked-choice voting than under plurality vote systems. However, ranked-choice voting––like any voting system––can produce suboptimal outcomes. One standard that mathematicians and political scientists use for evaluating voting systems is the “Condorcet winner criterion.” In voting systems that pass the Condorcet winner criterion, the winning candidate will always win in a one-on-one matchup against every other candidate. Neither ranked choice voting nor Oregon’s current plurality vote system passes the Condorcet criterion, although data suggest that Condorcet winners are more likely under ranked-choice voting. According to FairVote, an organization that advocates for ranked-choice voting:
Of the nearly 500 single-winner RCV elections in the United States since 2004 in which we have sufficient ballot data to assess whether the Condorcet winner won the election, all but two were won by the Condorcet winner. The two elections that did not elect the Condorcet candidate are the 2009 mayoral election in Burlington, Vermont and the 2022 special election for U.S. House in Alaska.
Alaska’s 2022 special election was controversial because the Condorcet winner, Nick Begich, did not win. Competition for first-choice votes between Begich and Palin produced a “center-squeeze effect,” which can also occur under plurality voting systems. The particular circumstance of two Republicans running against one Democrat in the same general election was the product of Alaska’s top-four primary system rather than ranked-choice voting. Unlike many other ranked-choice voting proposals across the country, the Oregon measure under consideration on the Nov. 2024 ballot would not establish a top-four open primary system.
While critics have raised concerns that ranked-choice voting may be confusing for voters, research indicates that “ranked ballots do not raise the probability that a voter would cast a void (uncountable) vote, despite raising the probability of at least one violation of voting instructions.” Critics have particularly cited concerns about ballots that are “discarded” because they only indicate a first-choice vote for a candidate that was eliminated in a prior round of tabulation. Failure to rank 2nd or 3rd choice candidates may be due to voter confusion, but supporters of the measure suggest “[t]his can be an active choice, meaning voters who don’t rank multiple candidates aren’t necessarily lacking understanding.” On average, about 7.5% of ballots cast in ranked-choice elections fall into this category. By comparison, about 40% of voters drop off between the first and second rounds of traditional runoff elections. Moreover, there is evidence that ranked-choice voting can result in higher voter turnout and increased engagement with political campaigns.