Why I Won't Be (Rank Choice) Voting

It starts with, "If you don't want someone to win, don't rank them." But it doesn't end there.

OK, let’s get this part over with: “Don’t you want your voice heard?” I’ve voted in every election since I landed in Portland, pre-Covid; I am batting around .000 in the matter of my vote being “heard,” much less changing the slumping trajectory of the state and city. Barring the Second Coming, I don’t see that changing, probably forever.¹

Yah, the pee-pul voted 57-percent for this steaming pile—but then Prop. 110 topped that figure, and votes for other dubious progressive wet-dreams also were passed by big margins (seen much “preschool for all” these days?).

Then there’s the “If you don’t vote, don’t object” argument. Which assumes that the 62.31-percent of voters who didn’t vote in the 2024 primary election ought to just keep their mouths shut. Which, coincidentally, is just the way our progressive overlords would have it.

In the last “hot” election, 2022, when Tina Kotek. got a last-minute transfusion of FTX money (from a now-convicted bagman via Senator Wyden), the turnout left 35-percent of the county’s voters bound to silence.

Maybe they were just too stupid to fill out the SAT-style ballot and drop it into the mail. Or maybe they saw our current politics as something to run away from—fast.

For whatever it’s worth, I’ll continue to vote in all of the first-past-the-post contests—if for no other reason than this system has sustained the American republic through everything that history has thrown at us. (The idea of a republic, as opposed to rule of the self-selected smartest people, which progressives don’t have the stones to say out loud, is also a reason to stick with it.)

I’ll vote for Will Lathrop for attorney general. I’ve met him, and he seems human, as opposed to the robotic Kotek-style cipher he’s running against, who is both a darling of the machine and The Oregonian. Two institutions that deserve a good spanking.

This is the only matchup that really counts: the AG will either fly cover for the machine’s misdeeds, avarice, and corruption (most legalized by the people committing it). Or Lathrop will have just enough power (after the machine tries to cripple him) to keep the thieves on their toes.

I will also vote no on every binary measure on the ballot. They’re mostly “proof of concept” plants by the shadowy out-of-state nonprofits and hyper-rich who think the hillbillies will swallow just about every bit of offal they can dream up. This election will either prompt them to find another backward state or unleash a flood of social experiments that will make the lefties in, say, the state Department of Education, look like pikers.

There are a few other first-past-the-post contests, to which I have decided to apply these rules for exclusion…

• No one gets my vote who is currently a member of the progressive machine, which means just about every incumbent on the ballot (tragically, no one saw fit to challenge my local state senate candidate and neo-Marxist, Khanh Pham)…

• No one who has been endorsed by any of the racialist nonprofits, such as Coalition of Communities of Color, Latino Network Action Fund, etc. If they want to play politics, let them pay taxes.

• No one who has been endorsed by any of the sex-politics nonprofits, such as LGBBTQ+ Victory Fund. When it comes to elections, they should keep their pants zipped up (see reference to taxes above)…

• No one endorsed by or employed by any of the public workers unions such as AFSCME, SEIU, the police, and fire unions. Enough of the “we get to choose our bosses” nonsense…

• …and that includes the Teachers Union, which saw fit to march in support of Hamas, and who wanted to inject antisemitism into classrooms…

• No one who has been endorsed by creepy outfits such as United Portland, Voters of Tomorrow, Portland Gray Panthers, and the Working Families party, which nudges out the Oregon Food Bank for the most misleading name prize…

• No one with Soros money (you know who you are)…

• No one who seems borderline nuts, which brings us back to Khanh Pham…

Which brings us to the messy current ballot and, most of all, the circus of almost 200 candidates circling the trough—let us not forget that after the computers select each of the 25-percent victors, each City Council member will be pulling down $133,000² per year. I am willing to bet that least 90-percent of the candidates aren’t making close to that in their current occupations, which mostly consist of bureaucrats, nonprofit hustlers, a teacher or two, and at least one homeless dude. Bonanza!

With that in mind, let’s start with the somewhat straightforward RCV mayoral election. Eighteen candidates, with the town’s dinosaur media crowning four or five worthy of coverage (if you can call the smears, traffic records, auditor’s hit-jobs, etc. “reporting”). Three are currently on the city council, and therefore must bear responsibility for what the city has become since…say, 2019, when you could walk around downtown without stepping in…

…or be accosted by drug zombies. The three “leading candidates,” none of whom likes talking about the city’s recent history under their thumbs, won’t make the cut under my criteria. The rest are, to be kind, lackluster. Why bother?

The stripper, Liv Østhus, gets the amuse-bouche vote, but when she emerges from behind her teacups…

…as just about the only candidate who seems to understand that the next mayor’s job will be largely “ceremonial,” she’s just another feel-good progressive.

Then there’s the guy who might fluke in on the second or third round,: Titan trucker (and last-minute taxpayer) Keith Wilson. If this guy really thinks that the capon-mayor will be able to—all by himself!—cure homelessness, we recommend another reading of the new city charter.

He might be nudged aside by Mingus Mapps (the guy we mentioned here discussing curb-cuts as a “civil rights issue”), who has been running a campaign that might best be called “low key.” If the black vote proves to be monolithic, and our enduringly-guilty white voters give him 2d or 3d choices, well…do the arithmetic. (We covered the math of “exhausted” votes and other computations back in June, ‘22, here.)

Either way, the probable winners illustrate one of RCV’s fatal defects—what might be called the “Second-Best Syndrome.” Or the “Elect a Wimp Factor” if you’re a realist about these things. Or, perhaps, the “Democrat who came from third place and managed to win in a Deep-Red state.” Which, as we’ve mentioned before, happened in Alaska. And why voters up north will vote on ending the RCV experiment.

But the fact remains—the mayor has no real power, other than the bully pulpit…and the Council will take around a year to figure out where the bathrooms are at. Bottom line: the “professional” (unelected) city administrator will rule the roost and SEIU and AFSCME will call the shots.

Another strike against RCV and its bastard step-child, STV, is the idea that some lucky people will, effectively, get to vote up to six times, or as the Progress Reports said…

Ranked Choice Voting allows voters to be a part of a process that uses their ballot to the fullest. When voters′ first choices are not elected, they can trust their vote will be counted for their next viable choice.

…which is as loaded with slippery words as a used car salesman’s pitch on 82d Ave. Note, “viable.” Some mopes, maybe those succumbing to the “Don’t Rank Rene” trope, will have their ballots “exhausted,” tossed out, on round one. Others will get to hop, skip, and jump up to six times. This produces weird mathematical artifacts (Alaska), or, according to the Heritage Foundation (yah, them)…

A study published in 2015 that reviewed 600,000 votes cast using ranked choice voting in four local elections in Washington State and California found that “the winner in all four elections receive[d] less than a majority of the total votes cast.”

Personally, I’ve always liked “one person/ one vote” more than “whatever the algorithm gives you until you’re ‘exhausted.’”

Which brings us to the train wreck known as the City Council elections. Unfortunately, these people will actually run the city (each with just one aide—thanks, lame duck City Council!). They won’t have to worry about the mayor vetoing their fantasies while doing anything that seven 25-percenters want. Given the crop of progressives on tap (most who violate almost all of my criteria), God help us.

As I’ve mentioned before, after reading all of the minutes of the Charter Commission I simply cannot find who, specifically, advanced the farcical idea that—for no apparent reason—the city should be chopped into four, no more, no less—districts with three councilors apiece. Why three? Ask Candace Avalos next time you see her.

It probably has to do with a guiding principle of the Charter Commission and its overseer, Julia Meier, which have quoted so often that I may have it tattooed on my bum…

Increasing opportunities for communities of color to elect their candidates of choice has also been a driving goal for the Commission. Portland does not have a geographic distribution of BIPOC residents that could allow for a drawing of a majority BIPOC district, nor does it have the level of income or age segregation and stratification that characterizes other large cities.

Translation: “The city is too damn integrated, so we want to stack the council racially, which will be ever so much easier if we can get our favorite people elected with the backing (and “bundling”) of our friends in the racial nonprofits. And pay no heed to the current racial makeup of our Council, or for that matter the various senators and representatives we’re sending to Salem. Keep talking about ‘disproportion.’”

Which brings us back to Khanh Pham.

The actual STV city charter language was written by a bunch of the usual suspects, according to the city website…

The amended Chapter 2.08 reflects careful consideration and collaboration between the City of Portland, Multnomah County, and the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center (RCVRC).

That old little flap of the kimono (where, once again Julia Meier reappears heading the transition, after stints at the Charter Commission, the City Club, and the Coalition of Communities of Color) also gives us a peek into the world of creepy money beyond the state line.

RCVRC is an outfit in North Carolina with a DEIJ (“justice” added) statement as long as your left arm and all sorts of tools available to make RCV work—or at least get it over the finish line.

Dig more than skin deep and you’ll find they’re funded by Fair Vote, the sinister RCV outfit drenched with Soros money, along with bucks from the Democracy Fund, a creation of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who plowed his selling of knick-nacks and knockoffs into various radical causes. Also lurking in the background is our old friend, now gone hopelessly woke, the League of Women Voters.

One big happy family!

And so very, very interested in voters in far-off Oregon.

The voting method they devised is now available for your leisure reading in the City Charter at 2.08.030 Ranked Choice Voting. Take a slug of Red Bull before reading it…and then ask any of the charter commissioners running for the Council seats they designed to explain…

…which is how you might get to vote six times.³ Personally, the idea that an algorithm gets to munch and crunch votes into itty-bitty pieces (see above equation) gives me the creeps—and reminds me of the times the progressive machine has said “trust us,” and then produced disasters of ineptitude and outright cupidity.

Their latest “trust us” is Prop. 117, on the ballot before Portland has a chance to give its “proof of concept” a workout. Seems a little hurried, doesn’t it?

From our perspective on the bamboozlement end of the stick, the big shots in CA and NY, and TX have decided that their fever dreams can be visited upon the woodsy hicks in Oregon for the entertainment of various currency manipulators, hedge funders, Bitcoin scammers, heirs of grandpa’s money, and other characters who wouldn't dream of visiting Oregon — unless they have a suite at the Ritz-Carlton and bodyguards 24/7.

That last-minute, flood-the-hillbillies $2.5-million for the Yes on Measure 117 gang (who have pummeled Oregon voters with $7.5-million in propaganda) came from another nonprofit with a ton of money, Article IV. It’s variously headquartered in either Arlington, VA or Lubbock, TX, and is headed by George Wellde III, whose day job is a director at Fortress Investment Group, one of those hedge funds that moves money back and forth and doesn’t actually make anything beyond mansions for the partners.

Which brings me to the most compelling argument for sitting this one out.

Call me paranoid, but my basic reason for a private boycott of RSV/STV is its pedigree. Members of the charter commission were selected by checking all the boxes of 2020’s progressive palpitations and reimagining anything not bolted down.

The new charter is the product of one of the most dysfunctional eras in the city’s checkered history: Antifa thugs trying to torch the federal building; Covid hysteria and GuvBrown’s experiment in negating the Bill of Rights; George Floyd, fentanyl martyr, mobilizing people penned up by the lockdowns (and making a fortune for BLM); statues ripped down—even the elk. It was not an era when sanity prevailed. In fact, insanity was richly rewarded.

This is part & parcel of the progressive machine that has ruled the city and state for decades. Brought to you by the same creatures who…

• Defunded cops and created a crime wave…

• Legalized hard drugs and produced an epidemic of ODs and Cartels dabbling in politics…

• Tolerated homelessness and turned it into an industry…

• Sexualized politics and transformed it into something eerily similar to grooming…

• Fell for climate apocalypse and we got escalating utility bills...

• Allowed education to morph into indoctrination and some of the nation’s lowest test scores…

• Racialized virtually everything by making a mockery of the 14th amendment…

It’s an endless list; weird voting is just frosting on the cake.⁴

You could argue endlessly about the mathematical details that take up pages in the city charter, but it’s borderline insane when each councilor will have no more/no less than a quarter of the vote is an open invitation to delegitimizing the Council at precisely the moment when this town needs a strong government, not a dozen products of an algorithm.

Let’s take a last glance at Prop 117, which will jam RCV down the throats of every city, town, and village in the state. Look carefully, and you’ll detect a smidgen of skepticism on the part of the legislators who put the measure on the ballot. (And got scads of contributions from the RCV’s backers, although some of our representatives, in our view, sold out cheap for a measly $500.) Guess who won’t have to face RCV elections in the bright, shiny future?

Candidates for the House of Representatives and the Senate.

If they don’t like RCV, why should you?

Having lived here long enough, I won’t accept anything the progressive machine and its useful idiots produce. It’s time to say enough is enough.

I won’t play their game.⁵

1. I lived in Chicago under the reign of Richard J. Daley; years later his machine fell apart, replaced by the Chicago teacher’s union; the city is now a laughingstock. Machines that die are always replaced by something worse.

2. Which, if they’re single, qualifies them to pay the odious 1-percent off-the-top Metro tax to subsidize builders of “affordable” tenements. Joke’s on you!

3. Here is a portion of the city charter’s language on STV:

1. C. Single Transferable Vote Form of Ranked Choice Voting (For Multiple Councilors).

   1. 1. Application. The single transferable vote form of ranked choice voting is used in any contest to fill multiple Councilor seats in the same district.

   2. 2. Tabulation. Each active ballot counts, at its current transfer value, for the highest-ranked active candidate. “Transfer value” means the proportion of a vote that an active ballot contributes to its highest-ranked active candidate. Each active ballot begins with a transfer value of 1. If an active ballot contributes to the election of a candidate, it receives a new transfer value (as calculated in Subsection b.(1) below). Tabulation for each contest proceeds in rounds as follows: 

      1. a. If the number of elected candidates is equal to the number of seats to be filled in a contest, tabulation for that contest is complete. Alternatively, if the number of elected candidates plus the number of active candidates is less than or equal to the number of seats to be filled, then all active candidates are declared elected and tabulation is complete. Otherwise, the tabulation proceeds pursuant to Subsection b.

      2. b. If any active candidate has a number of votes greater than or equal to the contest’s election threshold, that candidate is declared elected. “Election threshold” means the number of votes sufficient for a candidate to be elected in a multi-winner contest conducted by single transferable vote. The election threshold equals the total votes on active ballots counted for active candidates in the first round of tabulation, divided by the sum of one plus the number of seats to be elected, then adding one, and disregarding any fractions.

      3.                                         (Total Votes Counted)      
         Election Threshold =     (Seats to be Elected + 1)     + 1, disregarding any fractions

         1. (1) Each ballot counting for an elected candidate is assigned a new transfer value by multiplying the ballot’s current transfer value by the surplus fraction for the elected candidate, with the result truncated after four decimal places. “Surplus fraction” is calculated by subtracting the election threshold (“T”) from an elected candidate’s vote total (“V”), then dividing that number by that elected candidate’s vote total, and then truncating that number after four decimal places, where the candidate’s “vote total”is the total transfer value of all ballots counting for a candidate in a round of tabulation.

         2.                                 (V − T) 
            Surplus Fraction =    V

         3. (2) After determining the active ballots’ new transfer value in accordance with Subsection (1) above, the active ballots cast for any candidate elected under this Subsection b. are then transferred at their current transfer value to those ballots’ next highest-ranked active candidate, if any. If two or more candidates have more votes than the election threshold for the contest in the same round, their surpluses are transferred simultaneously. 

         4. (3) For the purpose of tabulating future rounds, a candidate elected under this Subsection shall be considered to have a number of votes equal to the election threshold in all future rounds.

         5. (4) If one or more candidates is elected under this Subsection b., a new round begins pursuant to Subsection a. If no candidate is elected under this Subsection b., the tabulation proceeds pursuant to Subsection c.

      4. c. If no candidate is elected pursuant to Subsection b., the candidate with the fewest votes is defeated and votes for the defeated candidate are transferred at their current transfer value to each ballot’s next highest-ranked active candidate and a new round begins pursuant to Subsection a.

4. It’s worth remembering that three commission members voted No, with Vadim Mozrysky (now running for county commission) recommending that the measure be split up to give voters a chance to decide the issue of RCV. He lost.

5. I asked Multnomah’s head of elections Tim Scott—the guy who will have to munch ‘n’ crunch your votes—if the number of non-players will be recorded. His response: “Yes, the system will be able to identify these statistics, but we won't have an ability to report them in preliminary reports. We plan to provide reports after the election is closed with this type of statistical data. There are other organizations that are interested in this data as well so it will probably be broadly reported.” Go figure.