Why Portland’s District 1 voter participation lagged other districts in first election using ranked choice voting

Earlier this month, the City of Portland and Multnomah County released data and survey results about Portlanders’ experience with ranked choice voting. According to the survey, 91% of voters said they understood how to fill out their ranked choice ballots. But only 55% of voters in East Portland’s District 1 turned in those ballots, compared to rates of turnout that ranged from 74 to 76% for the other three districts. District 1 voters were also more likely to turn in ballots that had no candidate for city council selected, and nearly a quarter of D1 voters surveyed said they had no awareness of ranked choice voting.

City officials acknowledged that more work needs to be done to reach voters of color and to better understand the low voter turnout in District 1. The lack of engagement may also be a result of decades’ long neglect for the needs of East Portland voters in City Hall, according to José Gamero-Georgeson, a D1 resident and volunteer at East County Rising, a political action committee that supports progressive candidates in East Multnomah County. He is also the co-chair of the Portland Government Transition Advisory Committee. Gamero-Georgeson joins us to share his perspective on how to engage and boost participation among voters in East Portland.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Only 55% of voters in East Portland’s District 1 turned in their ranked choice ballots last month. Turnout was about 20% points higher in the other three districts. What’s more, District 1 voters who did turn in these ballots were more likely to leave the city council section completely blank. City officials have acknowledged that more work needs to be done to reach voters of color and to better understand the low voter turnout in District 1.

Our next guest, José Gamero-Georgeson, says that the lack of engagement may be a result of city leadership’s decades-long neglect of the needs of East Portland residents. Gamero-Georgeson is a  resident of the district and a volunteer at East County Rising. It’s a political action committee that supports progressive candidates in East Multnomah County. He joins me now. It’s good to have you on the show.

José Gamero-Georgeson: Thank you.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for what voter education or outreach efforts in East Portland looked like this election season?

Gamero-Georgeson: Yes, there were numerous organizations engaged in efforts, a lot of nonprofits and PACs that were working to inform the voters [about] everything from their particular candidates to how to do the ranked choice. It was a unique election, so even the people that were pushing certain candidates were taking it upon themselves to also do voter education because that helped.

Miller: It did. It wouldn’t help their cause if someone knew the candidate but didn’t know how to select that candidate.

Gamero-Georgeson: Exactly. So there was voter education coming from everywhere. I know GTAC, the Government Transition Advisory Committee, also did a lot of voter education in East Portland. We try to focus on communities historically left out of city hall decision making, and that includes a lot of the population in East Portland. So there was a lot of focus on that. I know the city, when doing their plans, also spent a lot of money contracting with different groups to do voter education out in East Portland.

Miller: Before the election, if we spoke, say, in late October, and I’d asked you, “do you think these education outreach efforts have been successful,” what would you have said?

Gamero-Georgeson: Yeah, before we saw the numbers, I would have said, “OK, we checked all the boxes, tried to get different organizations that hit different groups.” And as far as we knew, they were all doing the right things. So on paper, everything looked great. Could we have done more? Probably, but everything’s a budget question, right? Well, I think we did as much as possible with the resources. A lot of volunteers also did a lot of work. I know the committee I sit on with the city is all volunteer and I did, personally, at least 20 or so presentations to different groups. And that’s just me, and there are over a dozen of us. So yes, it looked great.

Miller: And then these numbers come out. I gave a short version. There’s a lot of different ways to slice it, but the short version is that District 1 really stands out … I should say, once again. It’s not the first time that there’s been disparity, and it’s a hugely important point. But once again, District 1 voters were way less likely to vote at all on this ranked choice ballot. And as I mentioned, those who did were much more likely to not fully complete it, to not vote for mayor, for example, or for any city council candidate. How do you explain that?

Gamero-Georgeson: Well, first of all, you see it year after year. So I’m glad you mentioned that because yes, there were undervotes; yes, we didn’t vote as many; but yes, that’s a pattern for a long time.

Miller: You can’t say this is because of ranked choice voting.

Gamero-Georgeson: No, absolutely you cannot. Did it help? Probably not, but we also ended up with two women of color from our district, and five women of color overall on the city council. So, the voting numbers don’t reflect the great things that came out of ranked choice voting already. But there is a lot to do with reaching people in East County more than just presentations about how to vote. You need to establish more of a trust with East County to get them to engage more in the government.

Miller: I wanna hear more about that because it’s an important point. But am I right that part of your take is not that there was something inherently confusing about the mechanism of ranked choice ballots, but that the sheer number of candidates on those ballots was itself overwhelming?

Gamero-Georgeson: Yes, I’m already telling the groups I’m part of that we need to do more candidate education, in addition to just how to rank choice votes. Most people knew how to do it. I think there were a few hang ups – if they put multiple people in the same ranking, that’s the part where I think people missed something.

Miller: And am I right that that and that kind of voter error was higher in District 1 than some of the others?

Gamero-Georgeson: Yes, yes.

Miller: So that is a pretty clear example of not quite understanding the mechanism.

Gamero-Georgeson: Exactly.

Miller: But let’s say we don’t know how many people are going to be in the next city council races, maybe there will be a lot again. Maybe there’ll be 15 people in a single district, or 20. What do you think? I mean, is it up to the city or the county to inform people? Whose responsibility is that and what kind of work would you like to see?

Gamero-Georgeson: Yeah, I think it’s everyone’s responsibility, not just the city and the county, but also all the groups – the political groups, the advocacy groups, the different people that are putting forth their candidates to help. But we must remember that we always have this many candidates, even before ranked choice voting. We just had them all during the primary and then you only had to know one, the one you liked. So the difference is in the number of candidates. The difference is that now you have to vote for six, so you have to kind of know more of them.

So I think that’s the hang up: we need to just be better at teaching people and getting our candidates out there in more places, so people get more familiar. The city doesn’t really want to wade into that because they don’t wanna seem like they’re pushing particular candidates. But besides the multiple people in the same ranking, that’s the biggest piece that kept people from voting. So we have to come up with a way for everyone to help the citizens feel more comfortable with the sheer number.

Miller: Let’s turn to the bigger point that you were getting to before, which is the lack of faith that people in East Portland are more likely to have because of … I was gonna say decades, but maybe a century of feeling ignored or seeing disinvestment. What kinds of policies do you think voters in East Portland would need to see in order to feel like their needs and interests are being taken seriously now?

Gamero-Georgeson: Well, there needs to be more focus on building infrastructure out in East Portland. I mean, we don’t have sidewalks. There’s a lot of things that we just don’t have. They cut down trees and they plant them somewhere else to make up for it, but not in East Portland. We have the longest walks to parks anywhere in the city. If you need to get to a park in East Portland, it’s harder. There’s a lot of parks that are just not developed. They’re just big green lots that are a park.

So there are a lot of things that they can do to invest in East Portland. We had the issue come up when looking for places that the councilors could possibly land in East Portland for district offices, and there were very few assets that the city had in East Portland. Instead of having it be a reason to keep them from going out there, it was a reason to invest, to bring infrastructure out to East Portland. And that happens all the time. You see it with storm water … People don’t follow stormwater, but if you follow the sewage and how we treat all that, that kind of investment hasn’t been built. So we have to deal with all those repercussions, right?

Miller: What’s your theory for how this might work? So, let’s say that residents in East Portland do see more of an investment in all those infrastructure things that you’re talking about here – whether it’s roads, or parks, or drainage – is your thinking then, that that will translate to higher voting participation?

Gamero-Georgeson: They’ve shown that when you invest more in a community and you make it easier for them to access things … because all of that infrastructure also adds easier ways to get places, to do things and you don’t have to travel as far for certain things, so you have more and more time. So people can engage more with [the] city council.

I think another big part of it is that right now, city hall’s downtown, way far from East Portland. And there has to be an easier way for Portlanders in the far east to be able to do things like give public testimony and things like that. So, hopefully these districtwide counselors and having our counselors in-district will allow them to realize what it is to engage with their public officials. Because that’s part of it – they don’t know how, it’s far away, so they don’t do it.

Miller: In what you’ve just described, it seems like there’s a lot of pressure on these first three District 1 counselors to prove to their constituents, for the very first time … we’re not at-large, these are the representatives of this particular geographic area. There’s a lot of pressure on them to get this right, right off the bat. Is that a fair way to put it?

Gamero-Georgeson: Yes, and it’s a lot of pressure on all of them, not just District 1. More so probably in District One, but it’s a whole new system. And it’s gonna succeed or fail on the backs of all the new elected officials that are in this system, down to the mayor and city administrator, all the different people involved. I know that not everyone wants this system to succeed because all of a sudden you have 12 representatives instead of just a body of like four or five with the mayor. And you have a lot more people to convince. So not everyone. Certain interests don’t want a larger body to be making these decisions.

But District 1, in particular, they just have to be there for the people and show up. I just hope that they don’t end up always downtown.

Miller: You mentioned that you are currently the co-chair of the Portland Government Transition Advisory Committee, 15 community members who were put together to give recommendations to city leaders about this transition that we are almost at the end of at this point. What’s that experience been like for you?

Gamero-Georgeson: We’ve actually been talking a lot about that recently because we’re getting towards the end. We finish out in March. For me, it’s been a great experience. Were there frustrations? Yes, because when you’re making recommendations to the city and there’s only a few sitting city commissioners, they don’t necessarily always wanna listen to what you have to say. And a lot of people sitting on the committee get frustrated at that because you work really hard to make recommendations. If you don’t feel like people are listening, you get frustrated. But to me, it taught me about how to engage with elected officials, how to do good research, come up with good policy.

We did a lot of community engagement around voter education but also around the different recommendations for what committees they should do, what system they should put in place, how they can change the budget process to make it more inclusive of all the people in Portland, so people have more of a say and understand it better. And we did that by going to so many different peer cities and their websites, seeing what systems they have, what we saw worked and what didn’t, and coming up with recommendations that way.

Miller: Is there one recommendation that your committee came up with that was not taken up that you feel worst about, that you think had really would have made a difference?

Gamero-Georgeson: I feel like most didn’t get taken up.

Miller: Most did not.

Gamero-Georgeson: Because the thing is, most of our recommendations are really gonna be for the next council. The current council was working within their means and they had a budget shortfall. So like, for instance, something I pushed for and not necessarily the committee as a whole … I pushed a lot for district offices and we got a lot of push back for cost. So what we passed as a committee, the recommendation was for lower cost offices. And that didn’t happen either because of cost, because of the upcoming budget crisis. That made me a little sad out of all the things we talked about. Even though most of the committee probably wouldn’t agree, we did pass a low cost option as a committee.

Having that visibility of the councilors in each of the districts was so important to me and I felt the reason that Portlanders passed the charter in the first place. And I’ve been a little vindicated because once the new councilors have all been elected, a lot of them have been saying “this is my number one priority.” So you could punt things for the next people, but once the next people are in office they’re gonna have to deal with it and I’m glad they are.

Miller: José Gamero-Georgeson, thanks so much for coming in.

Gamero-Georgeson: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Miller: José Gamero-Georgeson is co-chair of the Portland Government Transition Advisory Committee. He also is a volunteer at East County Rising. He works on the political action committee that supports candidates who focus on improving East Multnomah County.

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