A ballot measure could change how Portland’s city government works — here’s what you need to know

Next month, Portlanders will vote on a ballot measure that affects the city’s charter. Supporters say the proposal will make city government more representative. But the measure is complex, and opponents say it tries to change too much. Joining us to explain the key changes proposed in the measure is Chris Hughes, policy director and counsel at the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center. We’ll also hear from Sol Mora, campaign manager for Portland United for Change — which supports the charter measure — and Alisa Pyszka, a member of the Partnership for Common Sense Government, which opposes it.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Many Portland voters now have ballots in their hands or in their homes with a momentous question on it about city government. The charter change would give more power to the mayor, create a new city administrator, increase the number of city council members from 5 to 12 and more. In a few minutes, we’re going to have a debate over the measure. But we start with a kind of explainer to better understand one big piece of these changes that’s created some confusion: the combination of multi-member districts and ranked choice voting. Chris Hughes is the director of policy and counsel at the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center. He joins me now. Chris Hughes, welcome.

Chris Hughes: Thanks for having me.

Miller: Thanks for joining us. Political scientists often call the form of elections that’s on Portland’s charter change ‘single transferable voting’. Can you explain what the term means?

Hughes: Yeah. So the term is, I mean in some ways, maybe for political scientists, self explanatory, it’s a single transferable vote system. Every voter in a single transferable vote system gets one vote that they get to cast in the election, but that vote can transfer between candidates. If a voter supports a candidate who’s very popular, they’ll be able to vote for that candidate. And then if that candidate gets enough votes to win, that same voter will have part of their vote transfer to another candidate that they also support, someone they also ranked on their ballot. On the other hand, if a voter supports somebody who isn’t very popular, that candidate will get eliminated, but the voter’s vote can still stay alive. If the voter’s favorite candidate gets eliminated, their vote will transfer to their next ranked candidate, somebody who they maybe liked not quite as much as their first choice, but who they still support and want in office. So that’s why it’s called a single transferable vote. Everyone has one vote and that vote can transfer between candidates.

Miller: This is a surprisingly challenging thing to explain without visuals, but this is radio, so we have, I actually recommend folks check out Willamette Week’s recent article about this, where they had various fairytale characters and showed visually how this could work in different scenarios. But Chris Hughes, just so we can all better understand the basics of what you’ve just described, can you explain how the threshold works in terms of what it takes for a candidate? Let’s say, there are six candidates for the three seats in one of these districts. What’s the threshold it takes for a candidate in the first round or successive rounds to actually be elected to one of those three seats?

Hughes: Right, so the generic way it gets calculated is if you’re electing three people, each candidate needs 25% plus one of the vote to win. So, if you’re electing, and the way it’s, the reason it’s 25% is you divide the total number of votes by the number of seats to be elected plus one. And that’s a formula that was arrived at after years of experimentation in real world elections in the 1800s and 1900s to figure out what the most effective way to award seats in the system is. So in general, candidates will need to get 25% of the vote plus one vote to win the election. In a specific election where there’s six candidates running, let’s say there’s 4000 votes cast. That means three of those candidates need to get 1001 votes. So 4000 divided by 4, three plus one, plus one vote. Each candidate needs 1001 votes. That’s functionally how the threshold, the quota operates.

Miller: But it’s more complicated than that because of the successive rounds and what happens as you sort of noted briefly, but I want to sort of dig more into this. What happens, say if there’s a runaway winner, one winner gets, I don’t know, 50% of the votes. say. What happens to the difference between the votes they got and the votes that they need, they got way more than they need. So, so what happens now?

Hughes: Yeah, so this gets back to what I said right at the start, where if, like you’re saying, if a candidate is wildly popular, gets way more votes than they need, way more votes than the threshold. A portion of every voter’s vote, every voter who counts, who voted for that winning candidate say again, like you said, they got 50% of the vote, will have part of their vote go to the next candidate they ranked. And this is where, like you said, radio is not a visual medium. This is where videos really help. It’s an abstract concept, but in short, voters will have, depending on how many surplus votes, that’s what it’s called when somebody gets more votes than they need, depending on how many surplus votes a candidate got, every voter who voted for them will have some proportional share of their vote go to their next candidate. So If somebody got 25% more votes than they need, a voter would have 3/4 of their vote stay with their original candidate that they preferred and have 1/4 of their vote go to the next candidate. If it was someone who got 50%, two times as many votes as they needed, in the example I gave, that they got 2002 votes in an election where they needed 1,001, they’ll have, every voter will have half of their vote count for their first choice candidate, the candidate who won and another half of their vote go to someone else that they ranked on their ballot.

Miller: What happens if they didn’t rank other choices on the ballot? Say they only voted for one person or say two out of the five? How does that affect the overall vote counting?

Hughes: So yeah, there are always going to be some people who only like one or two candidates and unfortunately they may not have a vote that goes towards a winner. What happens then is their vote will go inactive. It means we don’t know who else you may have voted for. All the candidates you preferred have been eliminated in this election, in the rounds of counting in this election. So votes go inactive. It means they can no longer be counted for any candidate and that’s something that will be reported in election results, saying here’s how many ballots went inactive because they ran out of rankings or voters maybe made an error that made it impossible to know who they wanted their vote to count for next.

Miller: How common is that in the places in the US or in other countries that have voting like this? How common is it for people to, in a sense, leave some votes on the table?

Hughes: So the answer is it really depends. It depends on the number of candidates running. The more candidates there are, we’ve seen the more ballots go inactive. If there’s a ranking limit on contests, if voters can’t rank every single candidate running, if they can only rank three of the six running, in this example election, more ballots will go inactive. So those are the sorts of factors that influence when ballots go inactive. More candidates, fewer rankings. Generally there are, of course, also going to be voters who only rank one or two candidates, but that’s a much smaller share of ballots that go inactive. Most voters rank three or more candidates. Of ballots that go inactive, which the highest inactive ballot rate I’ve seen is maybe 10% of voters who don’t, who aren’t using more rankings. It’s 2 or 3% of that.

Miller: Where is this system being used right now? This has been a key question in arguments against the ballot measure we’re talking about. So what are the numbers?

Hughes: Yeah. So right now in the United States, STV, single transferable vote, also known as proportional ranked choice voting, is used in Cambridge Massachusetts where they’ve used it for about 80 years, Arden, Delaware, which is a small town in Delaware. They’ve also used it for coming on a century now. East Point, Michigan used it briefly. Minneapolis, Minnesota uses it as well for some of their local contests.

Miller: And in the ones you’re describing, these various cities, are those perfect analog of multi-member districts or are they, are they using the system for at-large elections?

Hughes: So they’re using it at large. Cambridge uses it to elect all nine of their council members and all six of their school committee members from the city at large.

Miller: Is that a significant difference for you, having, using this system for at-large elections, meaning everybody in the city votes for the same big pool of candidates, for some number of spots, versus geographically defined areas where there are going to be in this case, four of them and three from each place? Is that a significant difference?

Hughes: I think it’s a difference. I don’t think it’s a huge gap, in experience or expectations. The way votes will be counted is exactly the same. It means there’s fewer people getting elected from a single set of rankings. Cambridge voters are typically ranking up to 30 candidates at once because they’re electing nine people to their council. I would expect voters will have maybe a more reasonable number of candidates to select from in Portland, that might make it a bit easier for them to fill out their ballots. And I guess the real difference is in sort of downstream effects, because from what I understand in Portland, the reason districts are also being introduced is people want some more geographic representation and districts introduce that in a way at large elections don’t.

Miller: We can dig more into these questions in the debate to follow. So let me bring you back to some of the deeper context for the way this voting system works and has worked in the past. One of the things I’ve learned in prepping for this, is that while it’s very rare right now in this country, it used to be much more common. Can you give us the 20th century history of single transferable voting?

Hughes: Yeah, sure. So around the turn of the 20th century, in the 1920s and 1930s, there was this really big push in cities across the country, including in the city of Portland, to have big reforms put in place, improving the way local government operated. This was a response to a lot of different political issues at the time, things like party bosses and political corruption and generally growing inequality, that these local governments were having a hard time grappling with. And so cities across the country chose a lot of different strategies to respond to those pressures. One thing that places did was adopt proportional rank choice voting. And about two dozen cities did that over the course of the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Cambridge, Massachusetts and Arden, Delaware are the only two cities left standing from that spate of adoptions. But cities across my home state of Ohio, Ashtabula, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, cities, the city of Coos Bay in Oregon, actually cities in Michigan and Minnesota and California and Massachusetts all adopted proportional rank choice voting to respond to those political pressures, to try and root out political corruption, to improve representation for voters of color, which at that time could have meant African American voters, but also meant at the time, Italian American and Irish American voters and to also just improve political representation, generally to make make it so that there were more perspectives represented at the table in these city councils.

Miller: If that was a big trend in the middle of the 20th century, in dozens of cities, why aren’t they still using those systems?

Hughes: So what, from what I’ve read, and there’s actually a very interesting book that just came out on this by Jack Santucci called “More Parties or No Parties”, the long and the short of it is most of these cities’ proportional voting, more or less worked as advertised. There was greater racial representation on councils, there was greater ideological representation on councils, but these party bosses and these party machines weren’t totally defeated. They were knocked on their back heels by the adoption of these reforms, but they stayed around, they stuck around and they managed to run, in most of these places, multiple repeal attempts over multiple courses of elections until they finally were able to ultimately repeal proportional rank choice voting, both because voters were responding to this increased racial representation, there was this backlash among certain voters who didn’t want that increased representation. There was backlash to some of the political parties and ideologies that got represented, that these party bosses were able to take advantage of in order to produce these repeals in these cities.

Miller: How much of a movement do you see now outside of Portland towards this system of voting?

Hughes: So right now we’re definitely seeing more of a focus on a single winner rank choice voting, which is going to be used in mayoral elections if it gets adopted in Portland. But we are seeing, I think, a really strong growing interest in proportional rank choice voting as well. Palm Desert and Albany, California are both implementing it for the first time this year after adopting it in the last couple of years. And we’ve seen cities, again in Massachusetts, sort of harkening back to that original era of adoption and cities in Maine adopting it or seriously debating its adoption as well. Portland is the biggest city that I’ve seen, that actually has a measure on the ballot to adopt it. So I think there is a, this is a bit of the leading edge of a wave of, I think growing adoption and interest in the reform.

Miller: Given how rare these systems, of this system of voting currently is, what would the challenges be for a county election office to implement them?

Hughes: Two things. One, the most important thing when you’re adopting any sort of reform like this to the way voters are going to cast their ballot and the way those votes will be counted is voter education. It’s going to take a very serious concerted effort with election officials, city officials, county officials and community groups on the ground, to educate voters about how rank choice voting works, how to mark the ballot and how these ballots get counted. The other thing is way more on the nuts and bolts side of things. There’s, you need voting systems, you need scanners and polling places or your central scanners because you all vote by mail, that can actually scan rank choice voting ballots and count those ballots accurately. That’s something that the vendors, the voting system vendors in Portland and Multnomah are working on right now. They need to produce that software still, but they’re looking at it. They’re building that software out right now.

Miller: Is there off the rack software that a county elections office could buy that could actually do this or does it have to be built from scratch and in a more complicated, more expensive way?

Hughes: So we actually, the Rank Choice Voting Resource Center have software that’s compatible with the voting systems in Portland, that could tabulate the results. What they, so once all those rank choice voting ballots get scanned in, you would export the data running through our software, it’s called RCTab and then produce your results. The hurdle for that, that I see ahead for that, is just getting the Secretary of State’s Office to sign off on it and say, you can use this in elections, because we’ve been used in New York City. We’ve been used in other rank choice voting jurisdictions, but it’s still, we’re still breaking into the market and we need to be able to work with the vendors in Portland to incorporate into their systems and work smoothly, if and when this has to get implemented in the city.

Miller: Chris Hughes, thanks very much for joining us.

Hughes: Thank you.

Miller: That is Chris Hughes who is the director of policy and council at the Rank Choice Voting Resource Center. If you’re just tuning in, we have been learning about one aspect of the charter changes that Portland voters will be able to consider on the November ballot. For a broader debate about the overall changes, I’m joined now by two people. Sol Mora supports the measure. She is the campaign manager for Portland United for Change and a civic engagement manager for the Coalition of Communities of Color. AlisaPyszka opposes the measure. She is a member of the Partnership for Common Sense Government and the President of the Bridge Economic Development. Sol Mora and Alisa Pyszka, welcome to the show.

Sol Mora: Thank you so much.

Alisa Pyszka: Thank you.

Miller: I want to start with the biggest picture here before we get to the important details of governance or elections. Sol Mora first, what do you want Portland’s government to be like in the big picture? What are your guiding principles?

Sol Mora: Yeah, this is such a great question to start us off and ground us in the values. So I think for me, it is incredibly important to analyze Portland’s history and the way that our city has excluded many residents from across the city. East Portland has been historically underrepresented for decades and many other Portlanders, like Portlanders of color and renters, working class people, have also been excluded. So to me, my guiding values in a local government in democracy, is a system that genuinely creates a political avenue and pathway for all of the communities of that city to have a seat at the decision making table. The more perspectives that we can have in our democracy, the more deliberation there will be to have holistic solutions for the challenges that our city is making. More accountable representation, to me, means a government that works better for all of the people that it represents.

Miller: Alisa Pyszka, what about you? What are your guiding principles for what Portland’s government should look like and be able to accomplish?

Pyszka: Yes. Thanks, Dave. So, building off what Sol said, absolutely, inclusion in our democracy is critical and we absolutely agree with that and we agree with that and we think it’s happening now. We’ve made significant changes to our public financing for campaigns and we’re seeing the results on our current council makeup right now. And absolutely, we agree we need districts. East Portland has consistently been underrepresented and underinvested. So including districts is absolutely important for that inclusion aspect. I think, well, I know, what is very different is that we also want to address accountability and efficiency in solving the problems that Portland is facing. We’re in a crisis right now with homelessness, public safety, and mental health. We believe the best way to address that is to hold our elected officials accountable. So the difference is, we view single member districts, not multi-member districts, is the way to make sure we know we have one representative within our district that we can either see, are the results being achieved or not? And through the voter ballot, through the voter box, we can hold those elected officials accountable. So I think as Sol mentioned, we have very different definitions of accountability. From our definition, it is: are we solving our problems? Are we getting outcomes? And that’s what we would like to see with this charter reform.

Miller: Okay, we got from the big picture to a very important difference in view of, in terms of one of the pieces of this charter review change. So let’s get into all the details starting with a piece of it, where there’s actually maybe less disagreement but which is helpful to uncover. Sol Mora, let’s start with bureau governance, the day to day management of the city. What would that look like under the charter change that you’re pushing for?

Sol Mora: Measure 26-228 will ensure that there is professional management of our city services and bureaus. Currently we task our elected officials and city commissioners with that administrative and managerial authority to run how city services are delivered. That is something that has not structurally worked because most of our representatives are running for office to champion policy agendas and be that lawmaking body. So measure 26-228 will move us to a system where we have a professional city administrator that has the qualifications and that expertise to ensure that the way that basic services are being delivered in Portland is streamlined and that there is high level coordination through that individual.

Miller: What would that city administrator’s day to day job be compared to the mayor?

Sol Mora: The city administrator’s day to day job means that they are the primary individual who is working with each of those bureau’s directors. They are the person that gets to hire and fire those critical positions. So on a managerial aspect, you can think about the city administrator as the head of who is working with all of those different bureau directors to ensure that there is communication and standardization amongst all of those different bureaus. On the other hand, the Mayor is the supervisor of the city administrator, so that means that the city council has no oversight over the city administrator. The Mayor is the person who gets to work on a day to day basis with the city administrator to ensure that they are also being held accountable and performing to their standard. So the Mayor is the person that will have a closer working relationship with that city administrator and it trickles down from there.

Miller: AlisaPyszka, how do you feel about this provision of the charter change, going from commissioners in charge of bureaus, executives of various aspects of city governance, to a city administrator chosen and overseen by the mayor?

Pyszka: Absolutely, we agree. We and I think the entire city knows we need to move away from this commission form of government. I think what the proponents are doing, though, is they are envisioning the city manager/administrator is holding all power to solve all the problems across the city. And they’re looking to this one person that’s not elected to be the one who’s gonna be accountable and efficient. So I think there’s a few more political realistic issues with this. The majority can fire the city administrator with two thirds vote. So it’s not just up to the mayor. So there is that leverage over the city administrator. The 12 person council sets all of the policies that the mayor and the city administrator have to implement. So there’s more of an influence. The council is not absolutely removed from this. The mayor and council members are expected to do the bidding of the council. So what we’re concerned about is that the mayor has no veto power if there’s concern because the mayor is the only person who’s elected at large, everyone else is representing districts. So you don’t have the one person who is looking over from a city wide perspective, has no way to weigh in, in terms of these discussions that could be favoring one or you’ll need to get a few districts, because you need a majority on the council. So that’s one of the elements we’re very concerned about, is the mayor is just basically relegated to the side with no actual influence on policy or direction for the city at a time…

Miller: So, let me run this back to Sol Mora. The argument in a sense is that you’ve made the mayor too weak.

Sol Mora: Yeah, so, the first thing that I would say is that the city administrator is the person who is responsible for overseeing how city services are being delivered. That is a crucial part of how Portlanders are getting access to what they need on a daily basis. However, it is the city council who is the primary lawmaking body, who will have the time to meet with constituents and communities of their district, to look at the big picture and solve the big problems of our city. That is not the job of the city administrator. We are moving towards a more representative council that will be able to focus on solving those issues that Alisamentioned like houselessness, which will take years and years of communication and collaboration too. So that is the responsibility of the city council. I would also push back and say that the mayor does have a crucial role in this form of government. They are able to introduce policy and keep that citywide perspective. They are the elected official that will be able to bring that citywide collaboration and work with the council to move their policy agenda forward. And I will also say that with multi-member districts, one of the biggest benefits to that model is that you have neighborhood voices that can be captured at the same time, that the district is big enough, that you’re not losing the regional perspective. So our city council will definitely be focused on citywide issues like affordable housing, just as much as the mayor will be too.

Miller: AlisaPyszka, one of the arguments that I have seen is that, for example, when it comes to the issue of giving the mayor of veto power or not, which could then perhaps be overridden by a super majority on the council, one of the arguments is, hey, if if voters say yes to this and then there are aspects of the changes that it turns out Portlanders don’t like, then they can make more changes. For example, giving them a mayor veto power. What do you make of that argument that we, that folks could pass this and then make new changes in the future?

Pyszka: I think that’s a really dangerous assumption for the voters right now and I’m hearing that a lot. I think what’s really important, people aren’t necessarily supporting this proposal, they just want absolute change from our commission form of government. And so I’ve raised this, that people are looking to vote yes, so hoping to make changes later. But when I addressed this in our City Club debate with Sol and Becca, their response was absolutely not, we’re not changing this. So what the voters are going to be adopting in November is what we’re going to be getting.

Miller: When you say, Sol, is that what you said in response to the question, we’re not changing this, meaning we’re not changing ever the form of government or we’re not changing the charter review proposal that has already been put forward to voters? What does it mean to not change anything?

Sol Mora: So, I think one there is a misconception about voters only wanting this proposal because it is moving us away from the status quo of the form of government. Portland United for Change has repeatedly done polling that shows that the electoral reforms of this measure resonate deeply with Portlanders that have been chronically underrepresented. We just conducted a poll with Change Research of 489 likely Portland voters that showed 60% of people in Portland support this November measure. So, I think we really need to remember that, in order for us to produce a change that is comprehensive, meaningful for our entire city, we have to change the form of government and have professional management of city services and we also have to move towards guaranteed geographic representation that better represents all of our communities, right? Those things go hand in hand together. Because the type of change that Portland needs is deeply historical change. We have not updated our form of government since 1913. And I think the deep unsatisfaction that Portlanders have is reflective of why this measure includes both changes to elections and changes to that form of government specifically.

Miller: So let’s turn to those changes now. But I also want to include some voices from our listeners. We asked folks on Facebook and Twitter if they support changes to the charter commission. PDX Guy wrote, “Nope. Would have kept this Frankenstein monster of a proposal in the laboratory where it belonged. Instead, it’s been let loose on an unsuspecting population.” Donna Cohen on Facebook wrote, “We are way below standard for the number of counselors. Our counselors are our voices in city government. We need enough counselors so that people can actually talk with them.” So let’s turn to the changes in city council and the elections for city council. Sol Mora, why have four 3 member districts for a total of 12 people on city council elected using the system that we heard about before this debate?

Sol Mora: I think it is incredibly important to understand that there was an 18 month process that shaped measure 26-288. During that time, those 20 Portland charter commissioners had conversations with community members across the entire city and they designed this proposal to work for our city with our city in mind. So, when it comes to district representation and the voting system that is proposed, we have to absolutely look at Portland’s electorate and geography and the history of gentrification that in Portland has pushed out communities of color, renters and others out of their historical neighborhoods. In Portland, you cannot draw a single district in which those communities are the majority because they just do not make up enough population in a district and are dispersed across the entire city. So the reason that single member districts work in other cities and jurisdictions is because populations are segregated. That is not the case in Portland. So, having a proposal with multiple representatives per district, that is something that works in Portland’s and ensures that renters, communities of color and working class people, do have political power to elect the candidates that they want to represent them in office. We have to look at Portland’s specific electorate and geography.

Miller: AlisaPyszka, what’s wrong with the system of elections and representation that Sol Mora just outlined?

Pyszka: So, I think I’ll just start with, the Willamette Week yesterday that came out against this proposal. And I think that one of their statements really clearly sums this up and it says, “We fear we could end up with the city council members who are unqualified and have little genuine support. Worse, we believe the system would make it impossible to dislodge a poorly performing officeholder because the 25% threshold is so low.” So Chris gave that outline of how the council members will be elected, which the Oregonian, also saying no, gave a great overview of how it’s going to be very likely we’re going to get fringe candidates which, with such a low bar to meet and as we’ve seen in prior elections, we get at least 10 people running for each of our current commissioner seats. So you’ll have at least 10 people running. And as pointed out, typically only one, maybe two are qualified. So that’s the biggest concern of this multi-member, single transferable vote method. The other method is really outlined well, again, by Willamette Week in their interview with Rob Nosse. We believe again, back to the core issues facing Portland and over and over, people say we need a leader, we need to have someone accountable. If you’re going to have three multi-member, districts of three multi-members, who do you go to when you want a sidewalk built? You have to call each of them, hope one responds. If there’s no response, you don’t know who’s responsible. You can’t use the ballot box as a leverage to remove those multiple member districts. In contrast, if you have single member districts, you know who’s accountable and the concern, and I’ll make one more point, Sol had mentioned all of the outreach and the public engagement. In our Willamette Week interview, one of the proponents said outright: single member districts are a nonstarter. It wasn’t considered in this process at all. So when we’re talking about outreach and asking for input from community members across the city, it wasn’t even given a consideration. And so that’s why we’re in this situation now, advocating for ‘No’ against this proposal.

Miller: Sol Mora, so listeners can keep track of your responses to the various critiques just brought up, I want to take three of the big ones, one by one. The first that AlisaPyszka just outlined, quoting some aspects of endorsements or arguments against from Willamette Week and the Oregonian is that this would lead to so-called fringe candidates or unqualified candidates that don’t have that much support. What’s your response?

Sol Mora: I want to start off by saying that it is harmful and disingenuous to say that rank choice voting produces fringe candidates. That is not what the research and data shows us across the United States and globally. Ranked choice voting does not lead to more support for extreme candidates. And ideologically extreme candidates are not viewed as more electable in ranked choice voting elections. Then in the current Winner Take All system, there is a great study that was done by Melissa Baker at the University of California, where she very indepthly studied this. So what we actually see with proportional election systems are that they benefit moderate and smaller parties, as well as women candidates. We need to look at the data and the outcomes that we see increasing representation for women and people of color. I think that looking at Cambridge, Massachusetts is a really great example where they have used single transferable vote since 1941. The use of single transferable vote in Cambridge, Massachusetts has enabled racial minorities to better succeed in local elections by lowering the threshold for election. Since 1980, the African American population, when it crossed 10% of the town’s total population, they have been consistently able to get representation on the Cambridge City Council.

Miller: Let me move on to another piece, because I think you answered that question, but there’s another one, and I’m glad you brought up Cambridge, because as we heard at the beginning of this conversation, they don’t have districts there. So one of the other big points that AlisaPyszka made was that if you have a pothole and then you have three different members, all of whom are from your district, then none of them is fully responsible for it. What’s your response?

Sol Mora: My response is that multi-member districts mean that you now, as a voter of that district, have three people on city council that are looking out for your area, that understand the issues of that district, and that are bringing back those priorities to the full city council. So if we look at the 12 member city council, you now have three voices on city council that are representing your area and if we break that apart even further, you have three people that you can decide who to reach out to based on who wants to champion your specific issues the most. As a renter, I would prefer to reach out to the person on council that has a better understanding of that lived experience and that genuinely wants to champion issues related to that. So multi-member districts are better at capturing the multitude of perspectives within that district. If you move towards a system with only one member per district, there’s just no guarantee that all of the different communities of that district will be satisfied with that result. And multi-member districts are just increasing that overall satisfaction for voters.

Miller: Before we go, I want to turn to a kind of elephant in the room here. AlisaPyszka, at times, not necessarily in this conversation, but broadly, the ‘No’ side has almost given the impression that this is a debate between two competing sets of changes to city government that are in front of voters, when that’s not the case. This is an up or down vote on one set of changes put forward by the Charter Review Commission, with no guarantee that the ideas put forward by Mingus Maps will ever make it onto a ballot, will ever be in front of voters. What’s your argument for saying no to these changes, when no other changes are necessarily going to be in front of voters?

Alisa Pyszka: I would absolutely, in taking this into consideration, because my concern is, and many of us on our PAC, have said this is going to make the current status quo even more dysfunctional, which is even pointed out again, and why Willamette Week is endorsing ‘No’. So if we’ve listened to the arguments from the proponents, this entire system is based on academic research. This is an experiment that is not used in the United States. We are going to take the current situation of the city of Portland, and the proponents are saying, let’s bring in, and they’ve said it earlier, we didn’t want a cookie-cutter model. We didn’t want a known model. We wanted a brand new bold experiment for Portland. So that’s what it is down to the board voters. Do you believe an experiment, not used, is the best way to address the pressing problems or we’re going to vote ‘No’, but you do have the opportunity, as a community, to advocate and tell your city council members the alternative plan can come on the ballot with three votes from the council in May. So that’s how we’re viewing this. We deserve a better charter amendment. This is not in the best interest of the city because it will make the status quo even more dysfunctional.

Miller: Sol Mora, I’m gonna give you 30 seconds before we go.

Sol Mora: Every part of this measure has been tested in the United States and globally. Looking at the coalition of who supports measure 26-228 is all you need to know, that there are trusted leaders, political science experts, small business owners that support this measure, like the Portland Tribune, Street Roots, Portland Association of Teachers, the League of Women Voters and so many others. We need change now and this is what is in front of us in the ballot. There’s no guarantee that isn’t just an empty promise that there will be another charter amendment referred to a future ballot. We need change right now.

Miller: Sol Mora and AlisaPyszka, thanks very much.

Sol Mora: Thank you.

Alisa Pyszka: Thank you.

Miller: Sol Mora is campaign manager for Portland United for Change and the Civic Engagement Manager for the Coalition of Communities of Color. AlisaPyszka is a member of the Partnership for Common Sense Government and the President of Bridge Economic Development.

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