Oakridge City Council July 11 special session discusses proposed revised city charter, proposed new voting system for Oakridge

By ANDREW GRIFFIN/for The Herald  —  On July 11, the Oakridge City Council held a special session to discuss details about a revised City Charter. During the session, the council heard about a proposed resolution to adopt a new voting system that Oakridge citizens could use to elect City Councilors. This new system, called the STAR system, an acronym for Score-Then-Automatic-Runoff, would function as an alternative to the city’s current system for electing Councilors.

Current system doesn’t allow for preferences in candidates

Oakridge currently operates with a biennial general election, meaning that every two years at least three City Council seats are on Oakridge ballots. All of the candidates for the open seats run in a single race, with no limit to the number of candidates who can run. Citizens vote for up to three candidates, with the three candidates receiving the most votes winning the election. 

“Voting in this manner does not allow for voters to express their preference on which candidate(s) they prefer the most, versus who they prefer the least,” read the Council’s agenda bill for the resolution. “Committee members found that voting in the standard way can be frustrating due to the inability of voters to be able to express their preferences, so they began exploring alternative ways of voting.”

According to Sara Wolk, Executive Director of STAR Voting Action, this current system not only restricts a voter’s ability to list their preferences, but also allows bias to influence which candidates get votes.

The current voting system used by Oakridge polarizes candidates

“This (current) system is well known to be gameable in the election finance world. It tends to favor polarizing candidates over consensus building candidates,” said Wolk. “The electability bias there is always gonna favor people with better name recognition, people who are more controversial, people who have more media attention and people who have more money, generally.” According to Wolk, the STAR system would help to mitigate these issues.

How the STAR system works

The STAR system works by first allowing voters to rate candidates individually on a scale of one to five, with a score of 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. That number is then treated like points on a scoreboard, with the score a voter gives a candidate being tallied and added to that candidate’s total number of points.

After voting concludes, the two candidates with the highest score are then moved into another round of tallying. The candidate that received the highest score on a citizens’ ballot is given that citizens vote, and from there, the candidate with the highest number of votes wins. “It’s like a primary and a general election all in one,” said Wolk.

Currently, no decisions have been made towards the proposed resolution, as the discussion of it in this meeting was only a public presentation. On July 18, the Council will vote on whether or not to approve the resolution. If it is approved, the decision on whether or not to adopt STAR voting will then be made by Oakridge citizens as a part of the city’s November ballot.

Informing the public about the STAR system is a priority

“I’m going to do my homework in the coming days to develop an informed opinion on the system before we decide if this should go on the ballot,” said Oakridge Mayor Bryan Cutchen. “While the voters will have until November to learn about STAR voting and decide if they want to adopt it, I haven’t seen a plan on how the citizens would be informed on the system in the next four months.” 

For more information on how this proposed system works, readers can learn more on the STAR voting website.