STAR voting initiative will appear on May 2024 ballot in Eugene

Corrections & Clarifications: This story was updated to reflect that Alan Zundel was a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, that the STAR petition only applies to mayor and city council elections and that the petition has been certified.

Eugene residents will likely will decide in May whether to implement the STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) voting method.

The city of Eugene received a petition Oct. 2 to change to STAR voting for mayor, and city council races. The Lane County Election's office has certified the petition, with 10,040 signatures verified out of 9,689 needed, meaning the initiative will appear on the May 2024 ballot.

If a majority votes "yes" on the initiative in May, Eugene will begin conducting elections with the STAR method in 2026.

How candidate runoffs are currently handled

Eugene mayor, and city council elections are currently decided with two nonpartisan elections.

In May of election years, all candidates appear on the ballot and each voter selects one. If one candidate gets more than 50% of the votes, they run uncontested on the November ballot. If no candidate reaches a majority, the two with the most votes run head-to-head in November.

How the STAR voting method would work

Under the proposed STAR method, all candidates would appear on the ballot in November, and voters would score each zero to five "stars."

Ballots would be counted in two phases. In the first phase each candidate's scores are summed across all ballots. In the second phase there is an "automatic runoff" between the two candidates with the highest scores.

Each ballot translates into one vote for whichever candidate the voter scored higher. The candidate with more votes in this phase wins.

Who is pushing for the change to STAR voting

The petition was lead by members of the Eugene chapter of the STAR voting organization.

Proponents say STAR voting would increase voter turnout and reduce voter apathy by allowing people to rate candidates according to their conscience rather than pick the "lesser of two evils," and voters could do this without "spoiling" the chances of their second choices.

They say STAR voting also would ensure winners have majority support and streamline the elections process by getting rid of primaries.

What opponents say about the proposed voting change

Opponents say the method is more complex for voters and election administrators and that the ability to vote against candidates in addition to for them will encourage more negatively-framed campaigns.

Proponents say it would do the opposite by incentivizing candidates to earn broader support.

Where the STAR voting idea came from

STAR voting was first theory-crafted in 2014 by Eugene residents Mark Frohnmayer, best known as the founder of electric vehicle manufacturer Arcimoto, and retired University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor Alan Zundel.

In the time since, some county and Oregon state political parties have adopted it for internal elections.

STAR voting has been used once in a binding election. In the 2020 Independent Party of Oregon primaries, Independent voters used the method to endorse Democrat Joe Biden for president, Republican Kim Thatcher for Secretary of State and Green party candidate Chris Henry for Treasurer.

Past attempts to implement STAR voting

There have been several attempts to implement STAR voting in Eugene, Lane County and Oregon over the last few years.

In 2017, supporters of STAR voting earned enough signatures to get the method on the November 2018 ballot for Lane County elections, but it was defeated after getting 47.6% "yes" votes.

Subsequent petitions for both Lane County and Eugene elections that began in 2019 didn't earn enough signatures. Petitioners said they would have gotten the signatures if the pandemic hadn't interrupted their signature drive and if Lane County hadn't ruled some signatures invalid because of "inactive" voters.

In 2020 Eugene city council voted 4-5 against asking voters to decide on STAR voting.

Councilors in favor said that the petitioners had gotten close enough that voters should decide on the method.

"All we're talking about is giving people a chance to vote on it," then Councilor Betty Taylor said at the July meeting. "Democracy demands that we let people vote on it. Even if they hadn't got the signatures, we have before put things on the ballot."

Councilors opposed said they did not want to override the county's decision to reject the petition. They also said implementing STAR voting without the county doing the same would cost the city between $200,000 and $500,000 to implement and up to $230,000 per general election to administer STAR ballots, while only saving $20,000 to $25,000 by not having a primary. STAR voting proponents say it would cost between $21,530 and $150,000 to implement.

"With budget cuts looming, I just think think this is the wrong time to do this process ," Councilor Alan Zelenka said. "$750,000 over the next year, I really think there's a heck of a lot higher priorities. … If folks want to get this on the ballot, there's a process to do that."

In 2021, the state legislature considered HB 3250, which would have implemented STAR voting for state elections. The bill did not make it out of committee.

There also are a pair of currently circulating petitions filed with the Secretary of State in August to implement STAR voting for state, local, and federal elections in Oregon unless localities opt out. To reach the ballot in November 2024, they must collect 160,551 signatures by July 5, 2024.

Alan Torres covers local government for the Register-Guard. He can be reached over email at atorres@registerguard.com or on twitter @alanfryetorres.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: STAR alternative voting method initiative on May 2024 Eugene ballots