Featured Campaigns!

 

STAR Voting for Redondo Beach, California

STAR Voting for Redondo Beach, CA. We are excited to announce that Redondo Beach City Council is officially considering adopting STAR voting for local elections and has even earmarked funds explicitly to upgrade their voting method! 

Action Items:

 

STAR Voting for Troutdale

STAR Voting for Troutdale, OR has re-submitted its filing to restart the clock in September 2021. The campaign now has through the end of summer 2023 to collect the signatures needed to qualify for the 2024 ballot. Plans for a campaign launch party and fundraiser are in the works! 

Action Items:

The STAR Voting for Troutdale Chapter is looking for more local leadership, including people to help coordinate and host meetings, an outreach and tabling coordinator, and an events coordinator, and there are other positions available as well. If you can commit to a few hours a month we need you on our campaign leadership team. 

 

STAR Voting for Eugene

STAR Voting for Eugene, OR turned in 10,406 signatures to qualify for the May 2020 ballot. Despite turning in well over the required number, the verification process determined that the fate of the petition came down to 23 signers who were subjectively rejected on the basis of their signatures alone. The petition was deemed "void." See the initiative processing report here.

The campaign then turned in 32 notarized affidavits to the Mayor verifying that these people did sign.

Concurrently, the campaign went through the "signers report" with a fine toothed comb, and documented over 30 signers who were rejected in error for a variety of reasons. The campaign has filed a legal appeal calling for this evidence to be considered. 

The case was heard in Lane County Circuit Court and was ruled "moot" in December of 2020 on the grounds that the election we had aimed for had past. Opposing council did not dispute our proof that the signers were indeed valid. This ruling is incorrect. Statewide initiative law states that initiatives must aim for a specific ballot, but this is NOT the case for local initiatives. Local initiatives are certified to the next ballot after they are approved, and our petition has not been approved yet, so that clock has not started ticking. Additionally, shortly after our ruling, another ruling in an adjacent case found that it is illegal to reject signatures from "inactive voters." An inactive voter is a registered voter who has not voted in the last few elections and who the elections division no longer sends a ballot to. 50 of our signers were rejected on the grounds that they were "inactive" for a variety of reasons listed and 27 of those were coded as "inactive undeliverable ballot." Learn more at the STAR Voting for Eugene campaign page.

Action Items:

 

STAR Voting for Oregon: 

We are excited to announce that Representative Zach Hudson, Chief Petitioner of STAR Voting for Troutdale, and former Troutdale, OR City Councilor, submitted our proposal for a 'STAR Voting for Oregon' bill in the Oregon legislature's long session this spring. Bills to provide statewise support for local adoption efforts and to convene a task force to study voting reform were also submitted. Our bills and other bills on voting reform didn't make it out of committee in the long session, but we meet with many legislators, raised awareness massively, and plan to keep up the fight in the upcoming 2022 short session. Learn more at the STAR Voting for Oregon campaign page.

Action Items: 

We are reaching out to Representatives and Senators to pledge to sign on and endorse STAR Voting, or to schedule a meeting or presentation to learn more about the issue. Learn more here.

 

STAR Voting for Utah:

Thanks to Representative Robertson and the Utah Center for Electoral Reform, a bill in the Utah Legislature was submitted which would allow local municipalities to adopt STAR Voting or Approval Voting. Utah HB 0174 amends an earlier open options bill which allowed local municipalities to adopt Instant Runoff Voting. That bill was initially intended to include multiple voting reforms as options, but due to pressure from FairVote and others, other alternative voting methods were removed from the bill before it was passed. We are proud of the Utah leadership for keeping up the fight to legalize better voting reforms which ensure that every vote is equal. This bills didn't make it out of committee in the long session, but we plan to keep up the fight in the upcoming 2022 short session. Learn more at the STAR Voting for Utah campaign page.

Action Items: 

We are reaching out to Representatives and Senators to pledge to sign on to endorse STAR Voting, or to schedule a meeting or presentation to learn more about the issue.

 

STAR Voting for Lane County

STAR Voting for Lane County, OR. On August 1st 2019 the STAR Voting campaign launched a new STAR Voting for Lane County ballot initiative, concurrent with a sister-campaign for STAR Voting for Eugene. The initiative had 2 full years to collect the signatures and six months later, with volunteers only, we had almost 7 thousand collected out of 14,174 verified signatures needed! Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. With two of our canvassers already sick we made the hard decision to suspend the canvass on March 1st, 2020. At that time, we reached out to Lane Elections and the Secretary of State to notify them that for safety reasons we had made this difficult call and to request alternative canvassing options and an extension to make up for this lost time. These requests were renewed again when it became clear as the pandemic dragged on with no end in sight. We never received a reply or recourse from either.

It's important to note that aside from in-person canvassing at the Lane County local level at that time there was no other signature collection option available. When we launched we had asked about online options and had been told that e-signature sheets (which had been available in past years) were no longer available because they had proven to be ineffective, were cost prohibitive for most campaigns to use effectively, and ultimately were deemed useless. At some point in 2020 this decision was apparently reversed, but we were not notified that e-sheets were available until we finally received a reply to further inquiries in early 2021. 

With the August 2021 deadline growing close and with cases reaching new all time highs in Lane County we redoubled our efforts to receive an extension but despite being told through backchannels that the majority of the Lane County commissioners supported the idea, it never came to a vote. Learn more at the STAR Voting for Lane County campaign page.

Action Items:

We need to raise awareness about this injustice and violation of our rights. The US Bill of Rights 1st Amendment explicitly upholds the right of the people "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," and Oregon Law clearly creates and protects the rights of the people to use the ballot initiative process to bring about needed change in government. The signatures collected by the STAR Voting for Lane County (Petition 20-2019-2) represented roughly 500 volunteer hours, by dozens of earnest volunteers engaging in the civic process in good faith. Those citizens deserve better. 

 

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