8A | WEDNESDAY, O CTOBER 17, 2018 | SIUSLAW NEWS
STAR from page 1A
Overall, the May electorate is
partisan and not exactly repre-
sentative of the entire electorate.
Young voters, independent vot-
ers, or those disinterested in who
wins a party’s nomination, may
not get their voice heard.
But it’s in that arena where the
final candidates for non-partisan
races, such as Lane County Com-
missioner, are chosen. Technical-
ly, winners aren’t chosen in the
May primaries. If a candidate has
over 50 percent of the vote, their
name moves on to the November
ballot. In the case of Lane Coun-
ty Commissioner Jay Bozievich,
who won with 55.75 percent of
the vote, will be the only name
available to choose for the West
Lane County position.
But the winner isn’t always de-
clared in May. This is what hap-
pened in the East Lane County
Commissioner race. Out of six
candidates, none received 50 per-
cent. The two highest candidates
received 31.25 percent and 30.69
percent. Per Lane County rules,
those top two vote getters will
spill into a runoff in the Novem-
ber election.
The problem is, those candi-
dates didn’t get there based on
any large swell of public support.
Thirty percent is a far cry from a
majority. Even though one will
eventually win a plurality of votes
in November, the candidates got
to that opportunity through a
minority of partisan electors in
May.
There are also issues of cost
with this: Those two candidates,
who had already put in a consid-
erable amount of funds to cam-
paign in May, now have to raise
funds for the November election.
The STAR Voting measure
would help to alleviate this di-
lemma by holding the primary in
November, which would widen
the pool of potential voters, allow
more diverse voices to vote and
save candidates money.
The second part to the STAR
Voting measure is how people
will vote: Score Then Automatic
Runoff (STAR). Instead of choos-
ing just one candidate, the voter
gets to rate each candidate be-
tween 0-5, with 5 being a score
in favor, and 0 being a score of
no-confidence. It’s akin to rating
a business on Yelp or giving a star
rating for a movie.
“The main advantage is you get
the opportunity to vote honestly
for whichever candidates you
like,” Roberts said. “You can give
whichever candidate you want a
five, and then give your second
favorite candidate a four or a
three. Or you can give your least
favorite candidate a zero, and you
give the one that’s just slightly
better than that a one. So, every
step along the way, you show
your preference.”
The theory goes, if a person is
faced with two candidates that
they like, they’re not forced to
vote one over the other. With
STAR, a person can show ap-
proval for both candidates with-
out compromising their vote.
After the initial vote is com-
pleted, the top two candidates are
put into an automatic runoff. It’s
there that votes will be reexam-
ined, where the candidate who
scored higher most often is given
the win.
“It’s about voting honestly and
non-strategically,” Roberts said
about the runoff.
She stated that without the
runoff, it’s possible that people
would just rate who they like
with fives, and who they don’t
like zeros. This is known as “bul-
let voting.”
“They’ll just try to ‘bullet vote’
all candidates they want to ad-
vance, and zero for candidates
they don’t want to advance,” she
said. “So, the automatic runoff
is a step that incentivizes honest
voting. If you know there is go-
ing to be a runoff, and if you give
one candidate higher than anoth-
er, and that one person gets your
vote, that will inspire people to
vote more honestly.”
Many consider strategic voting
a bane to American politics, with
the most common example being
the 2000 presidential race, where
Green Party candidate Ralph Na-
der was considered a spoiler.
The last, major battleground
for that election was in Florida,
where only 537 votes separated
Al Gore and George Bush, who
would go on to win the election.
That contentious election saw
arguments on multiple fronts
regarding how votes were tabu-
lated, how people were registered
and the readability of the voting
cards. But some of the blame was
placed solely on Nader being in
the race.
In a 2007 study in the Quar-
terly Journal of Political Science,
Floridian votes were examined
and found that if Nader had not
been in the race, Gore could have
carried the state, thus giving him
enough electoral votes to win the
presidency. In all, 97,488 Floridi-
ans voted for Nader.
The study estimated that 60
percent of Nader voters would
have voted for Gore, thus giving
him in the presidency. If those
estimates are true, Nader being
in the race “spoiled” the election
for Gore.
It’s these kinds of shenanigans
that STAR voting hopes to put an
“The software gave us a bit
of interesting data,” he said. “It
ranked the candidates by their
total points. It also looked at the
election as though each seat was
independent and compared the
top two point-getters in the pool
head-to-head. Those two meth-
ods of ranking have a couple
of differences. So, Candidate A
might get more points than Can-
didate B in the score portion, but
Candidate B might win the auto-
end to.
An example of how STAR
works can be seen in the recent
Whiteaker Community Council
election in Eugene, where the
system was given its first (and so
far, only) live test.
The Whiteaker Community
Council used the STAR meth-
od for its non-partisan, at-large
seats. There were 11 positions
open, with 14 people running for
the seats.
Did the voting process create
any major shifts in how the vote
ended up?
“It’s possible for there to have
been some changes in the last
seat or two, but the first nine or
so all had very solid support,”
Brad Foster of the Whiteaker
council said. “If I had to bet, I’d
say it ended up pretty much as it
would have.”
Foster does see promise in the
system and believes it’s ready for
a larger trial in Lane County.
“I also think STAR voting
might help bring more diversity
into local politics,” he said. “Rac-
es with multiple candidates from
the same party are somewhat rare
and appear to be actively discour-
aged by party activists. Under the
STAR format, it wouldn’t matter
if several people with similar, but
slightly different, platforms ran
in those races since voters could
fine-tune their votes.”
Foster also found some unex-
pected results.
matic run-off. I think it worked
that way for two of the 11.”
What happened in the White-
aker race was that for two candi-
dates, the initial voting score was
higher than their adjusted runoff
score.
To explain, we’ll call “Candi-
date A” dogs, and “Candidate B”
cats.
Dogs were very polarizing to
the voters in the initial voting
stage. Out of six votes, two voters
really loved them, giving them a
score of five.
Two voters were rather luke-
warm on the animals, giving
them a three. Two more voters
absolutely hated dogs, giving
them a big zero. On the whole,
dogs gained 16 points.
Cat support was a little broad-
er. Two people gave them a four,
two people gave them a three,
one person gave them a one and
only a single voter gave felines a
zero. The total vote for cats was
15.
In plurality voting, dogs would
have come up the winner of the
race, 16-15.
But was that vote actually
indicative of how voters were
feeling about the choices of
household pets? Yes, some peo-
ple really loved dogs, but just as
many people hated them. For
man’s best friend, they were pret-
ty polarizing.
Cats, on the other hand, actu-
ally had broader support of the
public. Sure, people weren’t as
passionate about cats, but people
also didn’t hate them as much.
Felines appealed to a broader
population of voters.
This is where the importance
of STAR’s runoff comes in. It
takes the top two winners of the
initial election, then counts how
many times each voter scored
one animal over the other.
In two instances, dogs scored
higher over cats. In one instance,
dogs scored lower. But in three
instances, cats actually scored
higher.
“We believe that STAR voting
will help us elect representatives
with a broader base of support,”
Roberts said. “You’re going to
see candidates winning that have
lots of threes and fours, those
candidates that everyone can
say, ‘Wow, I think they’re good
candidates,’ rather than the polar
extremes.”
Is it possible that candidates
who receive a majority of initial
votes will lose an election? Yes, as
was shown in Whiteaker.
Nonpartisan
organization
FairVote, which champions elec-
toral reforms, stated that because
of this possibility, STAR runs the
risk of violating fundamental
democratic principles.
STAR proponents believe that
without the rating and runoff
of STAR, the intricacies that go
into a person’s reasoning when
it comes to voting is lost in the
numbers. Even though the initial
tally may equal a majority vote,
that doesn’t necessarily mean the
majority wholeheartedly agrees
with the choice.
“Using data to choose your
representative leads to the more
scientifically or mathematically
based result,” Roberts said. “The
data shows what you prefer com-
pared to the other candidates,
and that information is used to
elect the representatives to sup-
port the people that they want
the most.”
It should be noted that while
FairVote had multiple concerns
regarding STAR, it remained
neutral on the system, neither
condemning nor endorsing it.
“We don’t see STAR Voting
as politically viable nor likely to
work like its advocates believe,”
FairVote wrote in December
2017. Instead of continuing to
look at STAR, the organization
stated they would continue to
look at Rank Choice Voting, an-
other form of alternative voting.
Another issue with STAR vot-
ing is that it can be confusing.
The “pick one” system is simple
to explain: Vote for the person
one wants to win and see what
happens. STAR voting is more
complex, with the electorate re-
quiring a modicum of faith that
the algorithm that supports the
system is correct.
However, faith in the voting
system America currently has is
generally weak. According to a
September USA Today article,
only half of American voters be-
lieve elections are “fair and open,”
with only 15 percent of voters
“strongly agreeing” with that sen-
timent.
Reasons for mistrust run the
gamut from aging voting ma-
chines to cyberattacks, as well as
concerns over gerrymandering,
limited voting access in states
that do not allow vote by mail
and adding restrictions to those
who can vote.
No matter what type of alter-
native voting solution someone
supports, the point is that, in
many cases, existing plurality
voting can inhibit people from
electing representatives that vot-
ers like the most.
Will STAR voting be the fix
America’s ills regarding voting?
Lane County will weigh in this
election day.
Coverage of these topics and
more from the Nov. 6 General
Election will be featured in a
special election coverage page at
TheSiuslawNews.com.
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