The Facts Behind the National Ranked Choice Voting Movement

And How it Will Affect Portland’s Future

The city of Portland had its first go around with its new voting system on November 5^th with seemingly unexpected results. Portland had shown in the previous elections in 20’, 22” and May of ’24 a tendency towards electing more moderate leadership, as seen in the victories of Mingus Mapps and Rene Gonzalez over far leftist stalwarts Chloe Eudaly and Jo Ann Hardesty in the city council, Julia Brim-Edwards in the Multnomah County commissioner race in ’22, and the Multnomah DA’s race, with Nathan Vasquez winning over a nearly comical soft-on-crime Mike Schmidt. The November ’24 election cycle apparently reversed these trends by a Portland public that had previously voiced it was growing weary of increased crime, out-of-control drug use and distribution, and unchecked homelessness.

In 2022, Portland voters also overwhelmingly voted in Measure 26-228, which implemented a new government charter, which admittedly, would replace an archaic government that favored the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. The measure not only wanted to, quite logically, change the city government to one that included district representation, but also increased the numbers of city commissioners threefold – from four to twelve. The additions to the measure that most people didn’t understand, but of course, still voted for, included taking much of the power away from the mayor’s office, including not allowing the mayor veto power. Another aspect of the new government was that voting for both the council members and mayor would be done by a ranked choice voting (RCV) system that few fully understood.

I met Phillip Izon at a RCV event in Portland back in October. He had come all the way from Alaska to debate local RCV proponents and elected officials Janeen Sollman, Mark Gamba, and Charlie Conrad. Also joining Izon on the opponent side was Sara Volk and Rep. Ed Diehl. Sara Volk is a former pro-RCV campaigner who is a progressive, but is anti-RCV due to her seeing first hand how the system was fatally flawed.  Izon is the primary campaigner for Alaska’s Ballot Measure 2, which is an attempt to repeal Alaska’s RCV system that had just been instituted just two years prior, and according to many, had ended up a catastrophe. The election gave Alaska its first Democrat US House Representative in 50 years, in a state that is decidedly Republican-dominated. Both the state’s Governor and its two US Senators are Republican, and it also overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in this recent presidential election, as he defeated VP Kamala Harris in the state by 13 points.

Although Izon’s campaign to repeal the state’s RCV system only raised $120,000, it has so far, appears to be effective, with a slim lead with just a few thousand votes left to count.

The shocking fact about this potential victory is that the No on 2 campaign raised over $12 million, a 100 fold difference in campaign donations. One has to wonder why such a princely sum was raised to defend the new voting system in a small, out-of-the-way state.

Izon told me that most of the money came from out of state, primarily funded by Arabella Advisors, a DC campaign funding machine, which, during this election cycle, pumped over $150 million into state measures that supported RCV in multiple states. Arabella sent money nationally through over 500 non-profits for their pro-RCV agenda, with such innocuous names as Article IV, 630 Fund, New Venture, and Action Now Initiative.

In Oregon, Yes on Measure 117 raised nearly $10 million, including the largest individual donation in Oregon’s history, $2.25 million in the last two weeks before the election, from none other than Article IV (WWeek Article). The sole opponent of Oregon’s RCV measure 117, was Protect Democracy, which raised a grand total of $11,375, a nearly 1000 fold difference in campaign funding.

During this election cycle, RCV measures were on the ballot in Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and the District of Columbia. All failed except for in DC.

One would have to wonder why ranked choice voting passed the Portland electorate, while it failed easily on the Oregon state level, losing by over 15 points.

“RCV is rarely successful when it is voted on its own merits. In Alaska, it won by less than 0.5% of the vote. Usually, it is successful in municipalities, such as Oakland, CA, and it is voted into existence packaged with other more popular policy, such as creating the district represented government in Portland,” Izon says.

Izon says that these RCV initiatives are often attempted in smaller, more conservative states. When I told him that in the new Portland city commission election, that half of the twelve candidates elected were supported by the Portland branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, Izon said, “That’s not unusual. It’s easier to elect radicals when they only need 25% of the vote. This is why Arabella is pushing this agenda in small conservative states. It’s a way to consolidate progressive power in traditionally conservative areas.” Although most of the RCV initiatives died this election, Arabella is going to continue to spend hundreds of millions on RCV measures. “Listen, this is basically the same people who have been pushing for hard drug decriminalization. They have unlimited money, and they will continue to plug away until they are successful.”

When I asked him about the prognosis for Portland’s future, Izon said, “You have to get rid of RCV. It’s that simple.”

When I asked Izon what he had against RCV other than the obvious dark money of its proponents, he told me that RCV doesn’t deliver on its promises. For one, it discourages many voters who are confused about how to effectively vote. Most people don’t understand how their ballots can be exhausted due to how they vote. It’s also a way to not only vote for the person you like, but to also vote against a candidate a voter views as a political enemy by not ranking a candidate at all, which really isn’t the democratic process. Izon also says, “RCV is also impossible to fully certify elections because you can’t recreate the original results. Most elections can take weeks, or even months, to certify.”

“In literally every election we have traced that went from previous traditional single choice voting to RCV, fewer people voted in the RCV election.  Also, the claims that it enfranchises minority and lower income voters is actually the opposite of what happens.” This statement definitely checks out when looking at the voting totals in Portland’s new District 1, which is the poorest and most racially diverse district in the city.  In the Oregonian article about voter engagement, Shane Kavanaugh found that nearly 29% of the voters who voted in other elections on the ballot didn’t vote down ballot for anyone in the city council election:

It wasn’t just District 1 that voters didn’t cast their down ballot vote for city council. All of the other districts were close to 20%. In the last election, only 7% sat out down ballot voting in the city council election.

One of the biggest reasons that RCV activists had for instituting RCV was that they felt it would engage more voters in previously disenfranchised areas. The new voting system did the exact opposite of that. As Portland faces a future that includes leadership that will undoubtedly be adverse to fixing Portland’s most serious problems as similar progressive leadership in the past have been, it will be interesting to see if Portland voters will bemoan the new voting system, just as they did for other far-left policy, such as Measure 110, and far-left former candidates who were voted out after one term, such as Mike Schmidt and Jo Ann Hardesty.

In any case, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. The only question is whether the city of Portland, already buckling under hemorrhaging population, increased taxes and costs of living, and an obvious economic downturn, can withstand many more of these bumps.

Here is Phillip Izon talking in length about the pratfalls of RCV:

What is the process for repealing RCV in Portland you might ask? Besides Charter Commission that meets every 10 years or asking the next city council to refer a city measure to the ballot (highly doubtful with this new incoming council), the third way is petition signatures. 40,437 inked signatures to be exact.

The signatures update every two years based on the May Primary Election according to an election analyst at Multnomah County. To place a measure on the Nov. 3 2026 ballot, signatures must be submitted and verified by July 3, 2026.