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Eugene, Oregon
votes on IRV
September 19,
2001
Yesterday, Eugene votes rejected
by a margin of nearly 2-1 a charter amendment that would have
required the use of instant runoff voting for mayor and city council
elections. You can view the official
results from the Lane County Department of Elections.
In the light of
successful IRV campaigns in Santa Clara County (CA), Vancouver (WA),
Oakland (CA) and San Leandro (CA) over the past 3 years, the results
from Eugene may seem surprising.
The failure of this
campaign was mainly related to four factors.
First, the charter
amendment was portrayed as mandating
implementation of instant runoff voting, but the punch card voting
equipment used in Lane County is not compatible with IRV. The
director of elections testified that implementing IRV would have
been expensive and would have required paper ballots that would have
taken several days to count ballots by hand.
Second, largely due to concerns about election
administration and possible changes to state law that would have
been required before implementation would be possible, the daily
newspaper, the Eugene Register-Guard opposed the charter
amendment.
Third, a well-funded
opposition campaign emerged in the final weeks of the campaign, and
they ran a series of effective ads portraying IRV
as a complicated system. The Yes campaign did not have the
resources to adequately respond.
Fourth, although the charter amendment was
been portrayed as an implementation vote, there was not a compelling
problem that IRV addressed in Eugene. Because the charter
amendment left up to the city council the details about how and when
to implement IRV, the campaign was not able to mobilize around the
benefits of moving local elections from a low turnout May election
to a high turnout November election.
In San Francisco, for example, where runoffs
cost up to $2 million per year and voter turnout often drops
precipitously, the problem is clear and the advantages of IRV are
more compelling than in Eugene.
The most important implication for future
campaigns is the necessity of addressing issues of voting equipment
and election administration. If the existing voting equipment
is not compatible with IRV, legislation should be written to allow
or implement IRV only when suitable technology is available.
Reformers should also work to ensure that new voting equipment
standards and new voting equipment include provisions to ensure
compatibility with multiple ballot types, including ranked
ballots. For information, please see our Citizen's Guide to Voting
Equipment. |
