This election season, Portland, Oregon will be voting on whether to adopt a comprehensive change to their city charter, or city constitution.
The proposed change was referred to the ballot by 17 of 20 people serving on an all-volunteer charter review commission after nearly two years of consideration. The measure is substantial: it would scrap Portland’s antiquated commission form of government and replace it with a council-manager system, transition from at-large to district elections, and adopt ranked-choice voting. Each of these reforms will bring positive change to Portland, but most significant of all is that Portland would replace its current winner-take-all elections (the default electoral method in the U.S.) with proportional elections.
If successful, Portland will create a blueprint that each U.S. city and state should seek to emulate – the fate of American democracy depends on advancing proportional elections. This is the growing consensus among political scientists, which is further reflected by the recommendations of organizations like the venerable American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the nationally renowned Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group.
Why? Because The United States is reaching a crisis point of political polarization.
The trend towards extreme polarization started decades ago, but for politicians and voters alike our democracy is reaching a tipping point. Attitudes toward race are the worst they’ve been in 30 years, and they’re likely to get worse. Though there are many disparate causes, an emerging consensus among political scientists is that our winner-take-all election systems rapidly accelerate polarization.
The reason is simple: winner-take-all elections are zero-sum. As a result, they foster an all-or-nothing, us-against-them mindset. A win for one group inherently is a loss for the other. Winner-take-all elections are bad for every American; they hurt both Democrats and Republicans, but they also disproportionately harm communities of color and women. They worsen the way our government is run and endanger the very fabric of our democracy.
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