By Peggy Bengry
Since our 2017 position on election methods, new ideas have surfaced that, as our position states, could “affect how voters participate in our democracy, who can run for office, and who can get elected”.
A committee of nine Leaguers, with help from LWVOR President Becky Gladstone and LWVOR staff, has begun work on an informational update to the 2016 Election Methods Study Update that resulted in the 2017 position. The current update is for informational purposes only. It will evaluate new STAR (Score then Automatic Runoff) and RCIPE (Ranked Choice Voting with Pairwise Elimination) voting methods against the criteria established by League positions and the 2016 study; provide a recent history of the use of ranked choice voting; examine new information on Top 2 primaries, including Final Four/Final Five; provide more input on proportional representation systems for multi-member districts; and expand the 2016 study’s bibliography.
Members expect to have a final report to the Board by May of 2022. Committee members have held four meetings, have formed sub-committees, have approved question sets for interviewees, have begun selecting interviewees and are researching media and academic literature. If you would like to join this effort, contact any of the co-chairs, Barbara Klein, Kristin Eberhard, or Peggy Bengry, through our staff at lwvor@lwvor.org.