STAR Voting 4 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 in 2021. Bills to provide statewide 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 about current and efforts to adopt STAR Voting at the STAR Voting for Oregon campaign page.

 

What STAR Voting for Oregon does:

  • Establishes STAR as the default voting method for the State of Oregon.
  • Allows local elections to use STAR Voting. 
  • Allows Bloc STAR for multi-winner elections.
  • Eliminates primaries for non-partisan races.
  • More choice. Voters simply score candidates from 0 up to 5 stars.
  • STAR Voting eliminates spoilers and vote splitting, so you can stop worrying about who you think can win and just focus on the candidates and the issues.
  • STAR Voting elects majority preferred winners.
  • STAR Voting would pay for itself within a few election cycles and then would start saving taxpayers money.
  • This is our chance to be a model for the rest of the nation.

 

Action Items: 

We are reaching out to representatives and senators to sign on to support the next incarnation of this bill in the upcoming 2022 short sessions of the Oregon Legislature. 

See our press release.

 

 

More Action Items: 

    • Email Senator Jeff Golden and Representative Dan Rayfield and ask them to support STAR Voting! Feel free to use the template below or create your own. To: [email protected] and [email protected] 

      • "Hello Senator Golden and Representative Rayfield,
        Thank you for working toward voting reform in Oregon. This is a moment in history when we can enact foundational change, and we owe it to the voters to get this right.  Many people across Oregon have been working to raise awareness around STAR Voting.  STAR is the culmination of decades of voting reform activism and election science research and it goes significantly further than previous proposals to deliver on our goals while addressing real and important concerns with both the current system and also with methods like IRV, which ignores ballot data and can skew results. Please help us bring the voting reform movement together and help us lead on this issue.
        Thank you!"
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Related and Competing Legislative Bills in the 2021 Long Session:

The 2021 Legislative Session introduced are a number of bills which impact voting reform. Some of these bills would help facilitate the adoption of STAR, some would compete with or have the potential to derail the adoption of STAR Voting. Some would adopt other alternative voting methods, such as Ranked Choice or Approval Voting. Here were our recommendations for those bills (download a pdf copy here):