Can Portland's Electoral System Heal Political Divisions?
Has democracy, civic trust, and healing societal divisions been on your mind lately? I've begun to wonder what role our institutions play in shaping or promoting ideological polarization. This has led me to question whether Portland’s electoral system—the system we use to elect our leaders—affects how we feel about each other.
Our research team at North Star explored this question in the academic literature. Read more to find out what we learned.
Electoral systems for divided societies
While no electoral system is a panacea, research indicates that some electoral systems are better than others at encouraging healing across ideological and ethnic divisions.
One analysis of the intensity of polarization on Twitter in 16 countries shows “that polarization is the highest in two-party systems with plurality electoral rules and the lowest in multiparty systems with proportional voting” (source).
Another study of a country where both a plurality-majority rule and a proportional rule are used to elect different legislative offices finds that the former “induces politicians to behave less moderately,” while the latter “has the opposite effect” (source).
With regard to the specific electoral reform proposed in Measure 26-228 ("multi-member proportional ranked choice" voting, or "multi-member PRCV"), several authors theorize that it is an appropriate system for politically divided societies (source, source, source, source). These authors claim that multi-member PRCV tends to elevate centrist candidates who have broad appeal.
Attempts to test this claim empirically have yielded evidence in mild support of the theory (source, source, source, source, source, source). Some authors attribute the 1998 Belfast peace agreement in Northern Ireland, at least in part, to the country's multi-member PRCV electoral system (source).
Whatever the outcomes of this year's elections, we hope that Portlanders move forward together over the coming months and years to create a community that feels healthy, safe, and vibrant to all of those who call Portland home.