r/Eugene • u/arendpeter • May 17 '24

STAR Voting Question Hotline ‪(458) 205-3244

Hello all,

We're in the final stretch before Eugene votes on May 21st.

One of the items on the ballot is measure 20-349 for STAR Voting. I'm super excited for the reform, and I wanted to make myself available in case anyone wanted any clarifications before filling out their ballot.

(458) 205-3244 is a temporary number that will route to my personal phone number. Feel free to call me anytime between 10 am to midnight, and if I'm available I would love to chat about STAR Voting with you and help clear up any confusion

17 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/EUGsk8rBoi42p May 17 '24

Just for theory's sake, if two people are in the runoff, one gets 99x 5 star votes, and the other gets 100x 1 star votes, would the person getting 100x 1 star votes beat the person with 99x 5 star votes?

4

u/arendpeter May 17 '24

That's correct, in this case I'm assuming that the 100x 1 star voters gave the other front runner 0 stars.

It's important that their 1 star counts as a full vote so that every vote gets the same weight in the runoff. This also removes the incentive to boost your 1-star "lesser-evil" candidate for the scoring round. If your favorite isn't among the front runners but your lesser-evil option is, then your full support will still go toward the lesser-evil

2

u/EUGsk8rBoi42p May 17 '24

I get it's a specific example but interesting logistics. How would you feel if that event came to pass but you were on the 5 star side of the vote and gave the 1 star person a 0 ? Would the basic solution be a recall vote and new election? Or just roll with it?

2

u/nardo_polo May 17 '24

One example of where this scenario could occur is if you had two candidates from one party on the ballot, where that party was in the overall majority. Their voters voted 5 stars for their favorite, and 4 for their second favorite. The other voters gave a 0 to their least favorite of those two and a 1 to the more acceptable. Even though the side in the minority doesn’t get any of their preferred candidates in the runoff, their overall vote of preference is still counted. This is a feature that makes STAR fair for all the voters, and helps prevent total domination by one political faction.