Multnomah County chair: Does it matter who you rank no. 3?
Our ballots are already filled out and ready to go to the drop box, but the other day I was thinking, Does it really matter if a candidate for Multnomah County chair gets a no. 3 ranking from me?
It's a three-way race for one seat. As I understand it, the only way my second or third choices will be counted is if my first choice is the first one eliminated (by getting the fewest first-choice votes). At that point, it's down to only two contestants, and the county will count my no. 2 pick next. If my no. 2 pick doesn't win, the other candidate gets the seat.
So is not ranking a candidate any different from ranking them no. 3? I guess a no. 3 ranking would put your third choice ahead of a write-in candidate, but the prospect of a viable write-in is so far-fetched as to be laughable.
The dynamic would be different if there were, say, seven candidates. Or if you're in the dopey Portland City Council version of "rank choice," where there are three positions but you may get only one vote. But it seems like ranking a Multnomah County chair candidate as no. 3 in the current election is the equivalent of not ranking them at all.
Or maybe I'm not understanding how the system works. I miss the old days when vote counting was simple enough to understand, and we all had more say in who finally won.
Somewhere between 6%-10% of adults in Portland don't have a HS diploma.
ReplyDeleteThis RCV sh!t especially ticks me off when I think about those folks, also trying to determine how they should vote.
And when you think about the people who'd pushed for it - constantly screaming that they demand "equity" for "all", that the rest of us have to just STFU because only-they know what's best for those who are struggling & oppressed among us - and then they quite-intentionally enact a voting system that even lawyers struggle with utilizing ("intentional", because there was plenty of reporting in other cities by then, about all this. And what kind of an idiot do you have to be to not-see that a number of voters aren't going to understand it & will be left-behind. *Intentional*.).
Add-in Oregon's unlimited flow of political money, and now we've got "organizations" being funded that are using the RCV confusion to influence the elections.
Dems/"Liberals" used to be the ones working to get everyone registered & voting. Now they don't have anything to really run on, so they're f*cking with the elections themselves, to maintain the majority.
Actual-"Socialists" would not be trying to oppress the vote, BTW.
Both Parties might as well merge into The Opportunist Party, you know it's what they really want.
(OK, rant over. I'm a 3rd-gen west coast Dem & that's the best I have to say about them at the moment...But, yes, I'll cut-off the caffeine for the day, ha ha.)
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023r1/Measures/Overview/HB2004
ReplyDeleteAs Hillary said after engineering a gruesome bloody coup in Libya- which was one of the strongest and best managed countries in Africa, "At this point what difference does it make?"
ReplyDeleteYour #3 doesn't count for MultCo chair. But it does for the Portland City Council. Aside from the obvious (i.e., your #1 and #2 get knocked out), if your #1 gets more than 25%+1, then your #2 gets a pro-rata share of the "excess", then if your #2 gets more than 25%+1, then your #3 gets a pro-rata share of the pro-rata share (which will probably be tiny).
ReplyDeleteRead Robert Marshall on Substack. Short version: the rank choice scam misfired; instead of racial minorities, we got political ones...the DSA, typical of Communist parties, is highly disciplined and votes as a pre-approved bloc. Absent other organized voting blocs, they will always win city council seats--as we are about to learn. Legacy media (1) didn't bother to cover the useful idiots on the charter commission, and (2) no one except some east coast fanatics understood the math, and (3) it was a foregone conclusion that the old system, which had built the Portland that attracted people, was BAD BAD BAD. Anything hadda be better.
ReplyDeleteAnd so here we are.
Up until now, no one with a public profile (and money) has dared to talk about changing this hot mess. Portland's weird passivity will continue...but, what the hell; there'll be a review in nine years. By which time I hope to be Anywhere Else.