Cascadia’s sustainability think tank brings you a feed of its latest research articles, in text-to-audio recordings. Learn how the region can advance abundant housing for vibrant communities; reform our democratic systems and elections to honor the public’s priorities, including its support for climate solutions; make a just transition away from fossil fuels and into a 21st-century energy economy; and model forestry and agricultural practices that rebuild our soils, ecosystems, and rural economies. View articles in full at sightline.org.
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AI doesn't know how many parking spaces a coffee shop in Tumwater will need in 2040. Nobody else does, either.
Artificial intelligence is coming to write your city's zoning codes.
Or is it? Most people assume their town's zoning rules are carefully tailored by educated planners to meet today's best practices while also ensuring future buildings integrate well with the existing community. Unfortunately, that's not really how it works in practice. The fact is that inside government offices around Cascadia, city staff are stuck enforcing rules they inherited from decades past, often having lost any explanation for the original requirements, though they continue to dictate how land can be used.
Among the worst of these regulations are parking mandates - a predetermined number of parking spaces required for every new home, business, or public building. These numbers were frequently copy-pasted from one city to the next or adopted from the average of a small number of parking studies. In Sightline's research on parking mandates across Washington state, we found that one town could require up to nine or twelve times the number of parking spaces for the same type of building as in another.
At some point we wondered if anyone would notice a difference between parking mandates that were generated by a computer rather than by a team of degreed city planners and administrators, plus zoning boards and city councils. So we enlisted Chat GPT, one of the most popular artificial intelligence (AI) tools, to produce parking mandates for several building uses. We gave the system zero inputs, keeping all of our research separate from the inquiry.
Now we challenge Sightline readers to see if they can spot the AI-generated parking mandates from the real ones. A note that we edited real and AI-generated mandates for uniformity, clarity, and grammar, according to our editing standards - and to ensure you can't spot the difference based solely on writing style.
Play the game at www.sightline.org
Parking Reform Alone Can Boost Homebuilding by 40 to 70 Percent
Episode 59
Friday, February 7, 2025 • Duration 05:47
More evidence that parking flexibility is key to housing abundance.
Making parking fully flexible could unlock more new homes than other land use reforms combined, according to new research out of Colorado that modeled how multiple policies would impact economic feasibility for new housing projects.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that making off-street parking optional is a small policy change that can lead to an abundance of new homes. Even though all the buildings modeled in the analysis voluntarily included parking, allowing homebuilders to create less parking made the biggest difference. In fact, building at lower home-to-parking-space ratios than what Colorado cities currently require could result in 40 to 70 percent more homes than are feasible to build today, the study found.
"Requiring more parking than the market demands leads to inefficient outcomes,"
researcher Ian Carlton explained.
"Excess parking takes up space in buildings that could otherwise be housing, adds costs that are seldom offset by revenues, and can determine whether certain types of housing projects fit on sites of various sizes. [Real estate modeling group] MapCraft's pro forma evaluations capture all three of these factors."
Compared to other zoning reforms such as legalizing ADUs or increasing building heights near transit, parking reform proved to be two to three times more effective at boosting housing supply.
Lower parking ratios increase homebuilding more than legalizing both granny flats and apartments near transit
The analysis, done by ECOnorthwest and MapCraft, looked at 19 counties across Colorado, representing about 90 percent of the state population and where nearly all future population growth is projected to occur. To estimate outcomes under different policy options, MapCraft generated potential development opportunities on eligible parcels and then found what would be competitive under current market conditions.
The 86-page report takes a deep dive into the outcomes of different combinations of housing policies. (Spoiler: more reforms = more housing.) But what caught our eye was one finding that compared eliminating parking mandates by itself against two other pro-housing reforms.
Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) allowed one backyard cottage per property without additional utility fees or owner occupancy requirements. The analysis assumed one parking space per ADU, unless local governments required more.
Transit-oriented development (TOD) would allow multifamily housing within a half-mile of rail and bus rapid transit stations and within a quarter-mile of bus routes with 15-minute service or better. Both existing and planned transit were taken into account, and local parking minimums were not adjusted for this scenario.
Parking, under the fully flexible parking policy, was still incorporated into new buildings at a rate of one parking space for every two homes in transit-oriented areas and one parking space per home in all other areas. Those ratios were based on real-world findings from Seattle after the city relaxed parking mandates in 2012. These results were compared to current local parking minimums in the baseline model.
If state legislators had to pick just one of these to throw their weight behind, the winner was clear: Fully flexible parking would result in more new homes than legalizing granny flats and larger multifamily buildings near transit combined, even if every new building still included some amount of parking.
When considering the policy influence along transit routes, increasing the allowed building size would be only a fraction as effective as allowing flexible parking quantities for what's already legal under zoning today.
Over a wider geography, parking reform still came out as the most effective policy for homebuilding. And that's when every new apartment outside the transit zones still built one parking space for every home.
The increase in potential homes was primarily driven by already-feasib...
The History of Washington's Wandering Election Day
Episode 58
Friday, February 7, 2025 • Duration 09:24
Despite intending to choose a voting day that's best for voters, timing could still be easier - and legislators can fix that.
For the past 50 years, Washington has held municipal elections in November of odd-numbered years, separate from other federal, state, and county elections. Most voters are too young to remember when the state's municipal elections happened on different dates, but the timing of elections has never been set in stone. Now, given the changes to voting that the state has enacted since the last date change - namely, mail-in voting - it may be time for another update to when Washington holds Election Day. Legislators could follow through on the goals of their predecessors, to say nothing of the overwhelming preference of voters, and continue to make voting easier by moving municipal elections to even-numbered years.
Early date changes consolidated most elections
Washington has never held national and municipal elections on the same day. When the state was founded in 1889, municipal elections were held annually on the first Tuesday in December. Then, the state legislature changed the timing of elections five times in the first half of the 20th century:
1907: Elections moved to the first Tuesday in April.
1921: The date moved to the first Tuesday in May. The wording of the law specified that elections were held "in the year in which they may be called." This phrasing suggests that elections could be held in either odd- or even-numbered years, based on the politicians' terms of office.
1923: The state moved elections to the second Tuesday in March.
1955: Elections were set for March of even-numbered years so that they happened in the same year as federal, state, and county elections, but in a different month.
1963: The election date for the largest cities changed to the first Tuesday in November of odd-numbered years. The law did not take effect until 1967. After an Executive Session in 1975-76, this change applied to all cities and towns in the state.
Five date changes in less than 100 years is a lot; state lawmakers certainly have not always aligned on the best time to hold elections. And many of the updates have complicated caveats - some of these date changes only affected the larger "Class A" and "Class AA" counties, for example. The change in 1955 did not apply if it conflicted with a city's charter. So, large cities with a charter provision that required elections in an odd-numbered year on a date other than the first Tuesday in November were allowed to keep that date; other large cities moved their elections to the first Tuesday in November of odd numbered years; and smaller cities still held their elections in March of either even- or odd-numbered years.
In those early years, lawmakers seem to have been trying to figure out the best timing for local elections. What were they aiming for?
The reasoning behind the change in 1963
Alas, historical records don't include the reasoning behind most of the earlier changes. But the Office of the Secretary of State wrote an Explanatory Comment for the 1963 change, which suggests that the Secretary is focused on making voting easier for voters.
The first reason the office offered for moving elections to November of odd-numbered years was to "re-unite the holding of city elections with school districts elections." In addition, the explanatory comment said the change "would establish September and November of each year as a consistent time for holding of elections. It would make sense to the voters, and the cities, towns, and districts concerned would be able to share the costs of elections." The Secretary likely noticed that the convoluted timing across different cities was not easy for voters or election administrators.
The 1963 bill also moved port elections in King and Pierce counties from November of even-numbered years to odd-numbered years. The Explanatory Comment says that the goal of that shift was to reduce the "overcrowding of state election ballots."
To ...
A Magic Boost for Low-Turnout City Elections
Episode 57
Friday, February 7, 2025 • Duration 03:13
Seattle's 2024 special city council election showed just how easily local voter participation could skyrocket.
First-time candidate for Seattle City Council Alexis Mercedes Rinck just got more votes in her 2024 race than the city's mayor, Bruce Harrell, when he won in 2021. In fact, she got more votes than any elected official in all elections that Seattle city government has ever recorded.
But it's not because she's particularly popular. (Plenty of other candidates have achieved a similar margin of victory.) It's just that she ran for office in an even-numbered year. Even the candidate Rinck defeated, Tanya Woo, got more votes than almost all other city leaders when they won their respective elections.
Rinck and Woo had the good fortune to run for office in a rare special election, which happened to appear on the same ballot as the major league offices of US president and Washington governor. Other city politicians in Seattle, as across Washington, normally run in odd-numbered years, when a fraction of as many voters bother to show up.
The result: King County voter turnout in the 2024 November election is on track to more than double the turnout in the 2023 November election (79.9 percent to 37.3 percent). And that's how Rinck can claim support from many more voters than anyone else in city hall.
Rinck earned around one-and-a-half times more votes than other recent at-large city candidates. She received 65,000 more votes than Teresa Mosqueda, who won the same at-large Position 8 seat in 2021.
Mayoral elections typically net the highest voter participation of any city election. But over 100,000 more people voted in Rinck's election than in the previous odd-numbered-year mayoral race. Far more voters voted in the 2024 city council race than in any recent previous city office election, as depicted in the chart below.
Rinck handily beat her opponent, Tanya Woo (58 percent to 41 percent), but even the defeated Woo received more votes than the winning at-large council candidates did in 2021. In fact, though Woo lost in 2024, she earned more votes than any winning city officeholder in recent elections, except current mayor Bruce Harrell.
Was this election, then, asphyxiated by the toxic presidential race that sucked up an outsized share of media attention? No. Were the ballots too long for voters to understand, as the Seattle Times suggested, forcing people to drop their pens and stop voting? Certainly not.
Instead, the takeaway from this special election is that more voters participate when voting is easy: when they're doing it anyway. It's much easier to look up one more position and fill in one more bubble when you're already completing a ballot than it is to open, research, and fill out an entirely new one at another time. And that lessened effort shows in this year's participation numbers.
State legislators could allow localities to more consistently take advantage of this simple participation boost by allowing them to move their elections to even-numbered years. Then cities could be freed to access a more engaged electorate during every election, rather than just a one-off special circumstance.
Reintroducing: Your Local Library, a Critical Tool for Democracy
Episode 56
Thursday, February 6, 2025 • Duration 16:10
A Q&A with author and advocate Shamichael Hallman on how public libraries can help us rebuild civic trust and connection - if we redefine our relationship with them.
"A community is not a machine. It is not a cogs-and-gears device or an elegant algorithm designed by an engineer to maximize efficiency. A community is a garden: a complex adaptive ecosystem in which all kinds of life is striving to thrive, a riot of diversity with the potential for both beautiful bounty and terrible chaos. Left to itself, a garden will eventually be overrun by weeds. Gardens require gardeners. There are no better gardeners of our democracy than public librarians."
Eric Liu, CEO and cofounder of Citizen University, in the foreword to Meet Me at the Library
As Cascadians from Oregon to Alaska, British Columbia to the Rockies, process their respective election results and reflect further on the health of the democratic institutions that support their communities, they might take heart from the lessons of a new book exploring the public library as a space of critical civic engagement. Author Shamichael Hallman, Director of Civic Health and Economic Opportunity with Urban Libraries Council, writes of a space that joins people together from all walks of life and offers resources to learn, connect, and realize their shared priorities.
Below Hallman shares ideas from his long and varied experience working with public libraries, including his own path to library advocacy, stories from Pacific Northwest libraries, and ways to learn more and get involved. Read more by purchasing - or checking out from your library! - his book, Meet Me At the Library: A Place to Foster Social Connection and Promote Democracy.
How did you first connect with the world of public libraries?
I share this story often because it holds a special place in my heart. Some of my fondest childhood memories revolve around public libraries. As an introverted, highly sensitive kid, libraries were one of the few places where I felt truly safe. The librarians were always kind, I could always discover new comic books, and they had the best encyclopedias. One of my favorite reads was Encyclopedia Brown, a series of children's novels from the 1960s about boy detective Leroy Brown. I'd sit in the library for hours, reading those stories and then trying to write my own versions. Some days, I'd just people-watch. Occasionally, there were fun programs where I could meet others. The library became my home away from home.
My professional journey into the world of libraries began in 2016. That year, I had a conversation with the Memphis Public Library system about a potential opportunity to develop and coordinate library services for teens. The role was exciting - it involved working alongside librarians and teen specialists throughout the system to create engaging, customer-centered activities and programs. It also included responsibilities like enhancing teen-focused digital services, designing metrics to evaluate program effectiveness, recruiting and retaining participants, and aligning everything with the library's strategic plan.
At the time, I was working for an incredible megachurch in Memphis, where I held various leadership roles that allowed me to explore and refine innovative approaches to community building and technology. In addition, I had spent the previous three years co-organizing a global faith-based hackathon series, which kept me deeply connected to emerging technologies. While the library role initially aligned with many of my interests and skills, the timing simply wasn't right. However, less than a year later, the library approached me with a new opportunity: helping to oversee the renovation of a historic branch in downtown Memphis, the Cossitt Library. This time, the timing was perfect. The role allowed me to fully integrate my expertise in technology, community engagement, strategic planning, and public speaking. It became a defining moment in my life and career, marking a ...
What to learn - and what to leave behind - from the 2024 ballot measure losses in Cascadia.
Sooner or later, bad things happen to everyone. That's inevitable. The problem is that people often learn the wrong lessons from their misfortunes.
Across Cascadia and beyond, proponents of unified primaries and ranked choice voting just had bad things happen to them. They lost four out of five statewide ballot measures in Cascadia and matched that record elsewhere. What's important now is to avoid learning the wrong lesson.
The wrong lesson would be that winning a better democracy is hopeless - an impossible get.
It is not. It's just hard. You lose more often than you win. You have to keep trying, even when the odds are against you. In fact, you have to study your losses assiduously and learn from them: they reveal the obstacles between you and victory. As Thomas Edison said about the trial and error required to invent the light bulb, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work."
You have to persevere because success, when it comes, brings immense payoffs. Open primaries and ranked choice voting are steps toward a public sector that can better do its jobs, from educating children to maintaining roads, from safeguarding borders to defending rights, from policing crime to cleaning the air. Specifically, unified primaries and ranked choice voting upgrade representation, dampen extremism and polarization, and favor leaders intent on governing, rather than grandstanding. They yield a public sector that is better able to solve problems.
Losing and winning
Proponents of reform swelled with optimism in 2024 as one after another state put change on its ballot: in Idaho, Montana, and Oregon within Cascadia, and in five states outside Cascadia. Conversely, they grew concerned about an attempt to repeal open primaries and ranked choice voting in Alaska.
The win/loss record left many of them disheartened (see table). Alaska was the only state where pro-reform votes topped 50 percent. Voters there rejected an attempt to repeal its model election system, but the final ballot gap was only 0.2 percentage points, barely a win.
The measure next closest to winning on the list of Cascadian questions was Montana's Constitutional Initiative 126, which captured almost 49 percent of votes. It would have enacted unified, all-candidate, top-four primaries for most federal and state elections.
Trailing behind with 42 percent support was Oregon's Measure 117, which would have used ranked choice voting in both party primaries and general elections for federal and statewide executive offices.
Then came another Montana Constitutional Initiative, number 127, which required majority winners in Montana elections, but left the state legislature to decide how to achieve that goal. The logical options would have been instant runoffs with ranked choice voting or delayed conventional runoffs. The measure gained support of less than 40 percent.
Finally, Idaho Proposition 1, which would have replicated Alaska's system of open, top-four primaries and ranked choice general elections in the Gem State, lagged the field. A little more than 30 percent of voters cast their ballots in its favor.
In sum, therefore, November 5 brought one win (by a hair), one near miss, and three lopsided losses for election reform in Cascadia. Meanwhile, elsewhere, Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada rejected reform with support in the mid-forties, and South Dakota did so in the low forties. Among the ten ballot measures in populous jurisdictions for electoral reforms involving open primaries or ranked choice voting (five within and five without Cascadia), only in Washington, DC, did voters newly embrace reform. They did so with enthusiasm, approving ranked choice voting by 73 percent.
Losing expensively
One source of encouragement in this gloomy picture is that Cascadian places familiar with ranked choice voting, including Benton County, Oregon, and the state of Alaska (which already ...
Lessons for Washington State Leaders as Another US Oil Refinery Closes
Episode 54
Thursday, February 6, 2025 • Duration 08:58
In a state home to five oil refineries, a forthcoming, taxpayer-funded study can answer some central questions.
Yet another US oil refinery will soon shut its doors. Phillips 66 announced in October 2024 that it will close its Los Angeles refinery by the end of 2025, due to factors that include declining oil demand and slim refining margins. An estimated 900 people are likely to lose their jobs when the refinery shutters.
Phillips 66's decision to close its Los Angeles refinery comes after reports earlier this year that the corporation planned to divest from $3 billion of its assets. And the news continues the ongoing trend of refinery closures across the United States. Seven US refineries closed between 2019 and 2022, according to Sightline's research. At least one other, in Houston, Texas, will shutter in 2025. More refineries will undoubtedly close as oil demand slows and then peaks, an event likely to occur before 2030.
Phillips 66 also owns a refinery in Ferndale, one of five in Washington state. News of the Los Angeles closure re-ups the urgency for Washington leaders to start a transition plan now for the future of the state's refining communities.
Lawmakers have an opportunity with a forthcoming refinery study from the state Department of Commerce. Legislators who requested the study - and invested $250,000 of public funds in it - can make sure the final product hews to its original intent and helps set Washington up for a better, more resilient future: one with clean air and water for nearby residents and Tribes, support for refinery workers, economic stability and tax and employment diversification for towns and counties that host the state's refineries, and a pathway to meeting Washington's climate goals.
The Phillips 66 oil refinery has polluted Los Angeles's Wilmington neighborhood for decades
Residents of Wilmington, the neighborhood in South Los Angeles where the soon-to-be-closed Phillips 66 refinery and several others are based, have breathed in the refinery's toxic pollution for decades - and suffered the health consequences that come with that. Just one example: one in three Wilmington households includes a member with cancer, compared to the US average of one in ten.
The Phillips 66 refinery has spewed on average more than 1,000 pounds of chemicals every day into Wilmington's air since 2000, including hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide, according to analysis by the environmental news outlet Grist. Unsurprisingly, then, many local environmental and community activists welcomed the news of the refinery's closure, while expressing concern for the laid-off workers.
Locals worry site will follow other shuttered refineries' fates
Still, Phillips 66 has not yet announced what will come next for the site, leaving some residents concerned that pollution could continue.
"I hope that Phillips 66 doesn't plan another polluting operation…continuing the trend of fossil fuels that are fueling the catastrophe of illnesses in the neighborhood and in the climate,"
Alicia Rivera, an organizer with the California environmental justice group, Communities for a Better Environment, told LAist.
Sightline's 2022 report on recent US refinery closures shows Rivera is right to be worried about what will come next. Four of the seven US refineries that closed between 2019 and 2022 converted to processing biofuels, in most cases with a sliver of their former workforce, no environmental remediation of the sites, and continued local pollution. Two refineries are keeping skeletal operations open to store oil or "idle" indefinitely, laying off almost all of their workers and shirking responsibility for environmental cleanup.
Only one of the seven, in Philadelphia, is being redeveloped entirely into a complex of e-commerce warehouses and life sciences buildings, which developers have branded the "Bellwether District." Even so, some local residents, who, like those in Wilmington, have suffered from decades of toxic pollution, a...
Three Ways Anchorage Leaders Could Unlock More Homes
Episode 53
Thursday, February 6, 2025 • Duration 12:24
The ordinances under consideration offer commonsense solutions to address the city's longstanding housing shortage.
$524,000. That's the average price of a home built for one family in Anchorage today. The average cost of new single-detached house is even steeper: $683,000. These prices, astronomical for Anchorage, have risen by 23 percent since 2020.
In that same period, the city took steps to make its zoning code, Title 21, more conducive to building homes. In 2022, Anchorage abolished parking mandates, giving homebuilders more flexibility to decide how much square footage to give over to cars versus the interiors of homes and businesses. In 2023, the city made it easier to build accessory dwelling units - a.k.a. "bonus homes" or "backyard cottages" - and opened up downtown to more businesses that support locals. In 2024, Anchorage removed some regulatory barriers to building triplexes and fourplexes and allowed duplexes on all lots in the Anchorage Bowl, where most of the city's residents live.
While Anchorage can't completely control the housing market, the city continues to make changes where it can. Title 21, which determines how Anchorage uses its land, still contains countless impediments to building the homes that people in Alaska's largest city badly need.
New ordinances coming up in the Anchorage Assembly could help alleviate the shortage by lifting arcane rules that in effect bar developers from building more homes, in all shapes and sizes - not just your basic nuclear family model. More apartments for singles and downsizing seniors. More modest-sized homes for young or divorced families. More accessory dwelling units for aging relatives. More multigenerational homes for grandparents, grown kids, and extended family. In short, more options for the wide range of people who call Anchorage home.
More flexibility for homes and businesses to mix in urban zones
Anchorage assigns different rules to different parcels of land. Each set of rules defines what's known as a zone. There are 15 zones across the city, all with rules restricting what kinds of buildings can go on a particular property, such as homes, schools, shops, and restaurants. Zoning rules also set out the maximum heights of buildings, the minimum sizes of lots, the width of the margin between buildings and streets, and how many homes developers can build on each lot. Some zones only allow commercial development. Others allow only residential or only industrial.
One zone, called "B-3," is more flexible than most. B-3 is a mixed-use zone, meaning its rules allow housing and businesses to coexist on a lot. Think an ice cream shop, bookstore, and dental practice on the first floor, with housing above. This flexibility makes it popular with developers of multifamily homes, primarily Cook Inlet Housing Authority. The parcels tend to be located in more urbanized parts of Anchorage, giving residents relatively convenient access to schools, workplaces, parks, and amenities.
The Anchorage Assembly is considering an ordinance, AO 2024-102, aimed at lowering the cost of homebuilding in B-3. Currently, residential developments face more stringent limitations in the B-3 zone than businesses. For example, building garden apartments would face more code barriers, like lower height limits and mandatory architectural elements, than a motel with the exact same dimensions and number of units. The ordinance essentially would put residential developments in B-3 on the same regulatory footing as commercial ones.
The ordinance would also do away with mandated private open space, like dedicated yards or balconies for each apartment. While private open space sounds like a great idea on paper, making such space mandatory can limit the number of possible units and the viability of projects, while not necessarily improving the quality of the development. Dropping the private open space requirement is similar to the city's decision to get rid of parking mandates. As for parking, so too...
Alaskans Keep Their Model Election System
Episode 52
Thursday, February 6, 2025 • Duration 06:20
The open primaries and ranked choice voting that have delivered more representation for independents and moderate Republicans survived a repeal effort.
Alaska voters narrowly decided to retain their groundbreaking election system. By a margin of just 664 votes, a ballot initiative to roll back open, top-four primaries and ranked choice general elections failed. The Alaska Division of Elections announced the unofficial results on Wednesday.
A recount is likely because the margin was just 0.2 percent. Support for "yes, repeal the system" stood at 49.9 percent. On the other side, 50.1 percent of voters opted for "no, let's not repeal the system." In just the few years it's been in effect, it has delivered more inclusive and less partisan primary elections, more room for lawmakers to govern in less polarized ways, the elimination of the "spoiler candidate" role, and a far reduced chance that candidates win elections without majority support.
Alaska's system has two key components. In the open primary, voters choose one favorite from a list of all the candidates, regardless of voters' or candidates' party affiliation - or nonaffiliation, as is the case for a large portion of Alaska voters. The top four candidates in each race advance to the ranked choice general election. In general election races with three or more candidates, voters rank the contenders from most to least favorite.
The system has allowed a small but significant number of more moderate candidates to run and win in Alaska. It has also given the state's large share of independent voters more say in who gets elected and allowed all voters the option to vote for candidates from different parties in both the primary and general elections. It's part of the reason Alaska's legislature will likely form a bipartisan majority in the state Senate and, most likely, the state House.
The system does not inherently favor one party over the other, but the victory in 2022 of US Rep. Mary Peltola, the first Democrat to represent Alaska in the US House in decades, prompted some Republicans to mistakenly believe that it had. Peltola's win in 2022 against Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich came about because of poor strategy choices by Republican party leaders, not because of the election system. (Instead of sniping at each other, Begich and Palin should have teamed up.)
Other Republicans, however, including US Senator Lisa Murkowski, state Senator Cathy Giessel, and former state Representative Jesse Sumner, all benefited from the system because it enabled them to draw support from voters with an array of political preferences. They spoke out publicly in support and brought some Republicans into the fold, despite pushback from the Alaska Republican Party.
Support from these prominent Republicans ensured the system had enough cross-partisan appeal for Alaskans across the political spectrum to retain it. Looking at the presidential results, about 55 percent of Alaskans voted for former President Donald Trump. A small but critical segment of those voters also opted to keep the open primaries and ranked choice voting election system.
The repeal effort started taking shape in 2023 with a signature-gathering campaign spearheaded by Philip Izon and failed US Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka. The effort eventually drew the attention of the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) for multiple campaign violations, including money laundering through a bogus church in Washington state. For instance, APOC officials in January recommended the group be fined $95,000 for violating state campaign laws. The repeal effort never succeeded in attracting the monetary support that's crucial to winning campaigns. As of October, it reported raising about $127,000.
The initiative's opposition campaign drew enormous sums of money from funders based outside Alaska who believe open primaries and ranked choice voting are critical to tempering political polarization. Key funders included Unite America and Art...
Portland Election Delivers City's Most Representative Council Ever
Episode 51
Thursday, February 6, 2025 • Duration 13:05
Proportional ranked choice voting lived up to the promises of the voter-approved charter reform.
Well, it's working!
Portlanders just used proportional ranked choice voting to elect their most representative city government in more than a century. Voters chose leaders who form a portrait of the city in miniature. The dozen councilors include three renters, five people of color, six women, eight millennials (one only 28 years old), and residents of twelve different neighborhoods. Most importantly, proportional representation paved the way for a council that reflects Portlanders' varied political beliefs, full of advocates for different viewpoints from business to labor, from moderates to progressives, and even from animal rights to transportation safety.
After years of thoughtful proposals, discussions, committees, and implementation, Portland got its first real-world look at a system that will hopefully serve the city well for generations. The upgraded council will govern alongside a new mayor who promised to be laser-focused on ending unsheltered homelessness, aided by a streamlined set of departments working in tandem under a professional city administrator. The next step? Getting to work on the city's most pressing problems.
A remarkably smooth and transparent election
Critics feared that ranked choice voting would be too complicated and onerous for administrators to manage. They projected chaos and raised alarms about undecipherable algorithms.
Nope.
The officials at Multnomah County Elections pulled off the implementation without a hitch, after only two years to prepare. Commentators from Multnomah County itself to the Oregonian called the election remarkably smooth and transparent. The elections office released preliminary results every few days during the ballot counting process as planned. Media outlets were able to call some winners based on large vote shares on election night, then confirm other seats within a few days. The closest races still depend on the last sets of ballots to arrive, just like under the old election system. And election officials are on track to finalize results before the legal certification deadline.
The biggest surprise from the tabulation was not its controversy but its consistency. Mayor-elect Keith Wilson started ahead in the first round of counting, with 34 percent of first-choice votes. No other candidate had more than 23 percent. Wilson stayed ahead until he gained a majority in the 19th round of counting.
Similarly, the top three candidates in the first round won council seats in all but one district. In the remaining District 4, which includes every voter west of the Willamette River and some Southeast neighborhoods, Eric Zimmerman started in fourth place, 112 votes behind initial third-place candidate Eli Arnold. But Zimmerman overtook Arnold in later rounds. In all the races, results remained mostly unchanged all week, as election workers counted additional ballots.
Multiple rounds of tabulation didn't substantially change the orderings of candidates, but ranked choice voting still had major impacts on this election. Vote transfers confirmed that a majority of voters supported Keith Wilson for mayor in the final round, a significant increase from the first round when he only received one-third of first-choice votes. In council races, candidates who passed the 25 percent threshold in later rounds started with as low as 10 percent of first-choice votes in a crowded field. Moreover, since ranked choice voting is better at avoiding spoilers in multi-candidate fields than the old pick-one method, Portland was able to eliminate the primary election, and voter turnout nearly doubled compared with the low-turnout primary elections that used to elect most city commissioners.
Mayor-elect Wilson might not have survived the prior system: the outsider eco-trucking CEO likely would have been eliminated in the former May primary in favor of two sitting commissioners, who were more familiar (and...
