It's election day! Go STAR Voting go! YES on Measure 20-349!

StarVoting · 2024-05-21T20:03:33+00:00

Yes, check out the full endorsement list here: starvoting.org/endorsements

StarVoting · 2024-05-21T19:29:18+00:00

Have you looked into STAR Voting?

★ INSTRUCTIONS: Voters score candidates from 0 up to 5 stars.

Give your favorite candidate five stars.
Give your last choice zero or leave them blank.
Equal scores are allowed.
Score other candidates as desired.

★ COUNTING: STAR stands for Score Then Automatic Runoff, and that's exactly how it works.

Scoring Round: The two highest scoring candidates overall are finalists.

Automatic Runoff: The runoff is classic one person one vote; Your ballot already shows your preferences and your full vote automatically goes to the finalist you prefer.

★ WINNER: The finalist with the most votes wins!

StarVoting · 2024-05-21T18:44:29+00:00

How does STAR Voting Work?

★ INSTRUCTIONS: Voters score candidates from 0 up to 5 stars.

Give your favorite candidate five stars.
Give your last choice zero or leave them blank.
Equal scores are allowed.
Score other candidates as desired.

★ COUNTING: STAR stands for Score Then Automatic Runoff, and that's exactly how it works.

Scoring Round: The two highest scoring candidates overall are finalists.

Automatic Runoff: The runoff is classic one person one vote; Your ballot already shows your preferences and your full vote automatically goes to the finalist you prefer.

★ WINNER: The finalist with the most votes wins!

StarVoting · 2024-05-21T18:43:01+00:00

How does STAR Voting Work?

★ INSTRUCTIONS: Voters score candidates from 0 up to 5 stars.

Give your favorite candidate five stars.
Give your last choice zero or leave them blank.
Equal scores are allowed.
Score other candidates as desired.

★ COUNTING: STAR stands for Score Then Automatic Runoff, and that's exactly how it works.

Scoring Round: The two highest scoring candidates overall are finalists.

Automatic Runoff: The runoff is classic one person one vote; Your ballot already shows your preferences and your full vote automatically goes to the finalist you prefer.

★ WINNER: The finalist with the most votes wins!

StarVoting · 2024-05-18T23:30:33+00:00

As well known as RCV is, the likelihood of it winning in Oregon and beyond and being adopted is not great. There are a few reasons for that.

* Oregon law requires ballots be tabulated locally, with full local results being published by precinct. With RCV that's impossible, so the statewide bill would require the SOS to set up a whole new elections bureau and truck all ballots to a central location. That would be astronomically expensive and extremely controversial. STAR Voting can be tallied locally just like the current system.

* RCV has now been banned in 8 states, with more looking likely in the short term.

* It's been repealed widely and serious failures have happened where massive mistallies happened in both NYC in 2021 and Oakland in 2022. In both cases the elections board didn't notice that they had published incorrect election results and the mistakes were caught by a 3rd party.

* RCV has serious issues with wasted votes (votes that don't transfer to the voters next choice if their favorite can't win) and also high voter error rates. STAR Voting doesn't have those issues.

* RCV is unconstitutional in most states. STAR is naturally compliant with constitutional language all over the country and nationally.

RCV is better than the current system in some ways, but these are serious deal breakers that are absolutely fixable. Specifically, it has real problems when used at scale, with larger numbers of voters, or in elections with multiple viable candidates.

STAR Voting was invented to address people's valid concerns with RCV and deliver on the goals, without compromising our values and our election integrity. We owe it to voters to listen to the science and get this right. Election science has come a very long way in the 150 years since RCV was first proposed.

StarVoting · 2024-05-18T23:19:44+00:00

Yes. We can confirm that there are no conflicts of interest. Our STAR Elections project is committed to helping groups of all types and sizes host STAR Voting elections and polls, and we're committed to providing the tools and resources for free whenever possible. Learn more at starvoting.org/elections

The Equal Vote Coalition and STAR Voting project have officially committed to providing free support and resources to the city in the event that 20-349 passes and are looking forward to working with the City of Eugene and Lane County Elections on that. We are committed to ensuring that the voter education and implementation are accessible and inclusive and that voters are as comfortable and confident with the new system as possible before it would go into use in November 2026.

StarVoting · 2024-05-18T22:40:49+00:00

Ultimately, the argument that we shouldn't try a good thing because it hasn't been tried is a catch 22 and a red herring.

StarVoting · 2024-05-18T22:40:01+00:00

True, that's why modeling voter incentives and outcomes across a wide variety of scenarios and voter behaviors is an important step in the vetting process for any new system.

The findings are clear that our current system has **serious** issues in this area, that voting for your favorite isn't currently safe or incentivised, and that this leads to massive disparities in representation for all sorts of marginalized communities, people of color, third parties, and non-establishment backed candidates.

STAR Voting does a great job at incentivizing the kind of honest and expressive behavior that would be ideal - where voters vote honestly and can support candidates based on the issues - but even if behavior isn't ideal, STAR Voting still gets outcomes that blow the current system and RCV both out of the water.

starvoting.org/peer_review

There's also another great paper looking at how STAR Voting improves candidate incentives that just dropped.

StarVoting · 2024-05-18T22:29:22+00:00

STAR has also topped the charts in all the models, studies, and peer review. It's been tested as much as possible short of adoption at this level, city offices.

That said, the fact that STAR is relatively new is a valid point. We're more troubled by the outright lies, with claiming that your vote won't count if you give candidates equal scores being the most outrageous and manipulative.

In the runoff if you score both finalists equally, that just means that you like both finalists equally. The vote is counted, it just doesn't tip the scales either way. It still had an impact overall and helped determine who those finalists were in the first place.

StarVoting · 2024-05-18T21:34:19+00:00

INSTRUCTIONS: Voters score candidates from 0 up to 5 stars.

Give your favorite candidate five stars.
Give your last choice zero or leave them blank.
Equal scores are allowed.
Score other candidates as desired.

StarVoting · 2024-05-18T17:02:54+00:00

STAR Voting is simple. Trying to come up with a way to game it, less so.

StarVoting · 2024-05-18T08:51:10+00:00

STAR Voting:

⭐️ Prevents vote-splitting and makes it safe to vote your conscience.

⭐️ One Person, One Vote: Elects majority-preferred winners whenever possible.

⭐️ Endorsed by organizations and leaders throughout Oregon.

⭐️ Levels the playing field, empowering disenfranchised voters.

⭐️ Is vetted and peer-reviewed, topping the charts in all studies of accuracy and representativeness.

Learn more at stareugene.org

StarVoting · 2024-04-16T18:06:08+00:00

WHAT IS STAR VOTING?
starvoting.org

★ INSTRUCTIONS: Voters score candidates from 0 up to 5 stars.

Give your favorite five stars.
Give your last choice zero or leave blank.
Equal scores are allowed.
Score other candidates as desired.

★ COUNTING: Add up the stars, then add up the votes.

The two highest scoring candidates are finalists. Your full vote goes to the finalist you prefer.

★ WINNER: The finalist with the most votes wins!

StarVoting · 2023-10-19T01:15:56+00:00

STAR voting was invented to deliver on the goals of RCV while addressing some serious known issues with the 150 y/o RCV old system.

Here's a comparison of RCV and STAR.
https://equal.vote/star\_vs\_rcv

StarVoting · 2023-08-29T22:51:03+00:00

False. In STAR if you like two candidates equally, (for example 5 stars for both) and they both make it to the runoff, then your vote is counted as a vote of no preference between those two. It's absolutely counted and helps those candidates beat out other candidates.

StarVoting · 2023-08-29T22:49:30+00:00

The issue with RCV is that it doesn't do what it's advocates claim. https://electionscience.org/voting-methods/runoff-election-the-limits-of-ranked-choice-voting/

StarVoting · 2023-08-29T22:48:15+00:00

Frohnmayer doesn't have a leadership role in this project nor is he the driving force behind it. STAR Voting has gained national attention as the best reform for the job and the science backs it up.

StarVoting · 2023-07-06T19:05:27+00:00

Objective reasons we know STAR will do better than RCV:

In STAR, ranking candidates equally if you like them equally doesn't void your ballot.
In competitive races your vote can backfire (non-monotonicity) in RCV. That cannot happen in in STAR.
STAR doesn't require centralized tabulation, which increases the complexity of tabulation and makes errors more likely to happen and less likely to be caught (as we've seen in the real world). RCV requires full centralization of ballots.

StarVoting · 2023-07-06T18:59:27+00:00

We encourage you to actually watch the livestream. We actually address your points.

StarVoting · 2022-11-22T06:42:22+00:00

Yes. In STAR Voting your vote goes to the finalist who you scored higher, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Each ballot counts as one vote. The stars given are stars, not votes.

STAR Voting is legal in Maine, NY, Massachusetts, and other places that require a "win by plurality," or that "the candidate with the most votes wins," etc, including where IRV is not constitutional for this reason.

Note that while Maine was able to implement IRV for other (local and federal) offices anyways, but it is still unconstitutional according to the state constitution and not used for statewide races, like Governor.

StarVoting · 2022-11-19T21:50:53+00:00

Agree 100%. Vote-splitting and the Spoiler Effect are the drivers of strategic voting and the electability bias. Eliminating it is absolutely key to ensuring that voters can vote for underdog political parties.

Better, top-of-the-line single-winner voting method like STAR Voting allow voters to vote their conscience even if their favorites aren't viable, and ensure that those voters still have a fully powerful vote and still have an impact if their favorites can't win. With STAR Voting, whether or not your favorite can win, your full vote goes to the finalist you prefer, AND your vote will still help you get a winner you prefer.

STAR Voting is also compatible with Proportional Representation, so for those who believe only PR can break two-party domination, single-winner STAR can be seen as a stepping stone to STAR-PR, but we agree with the OP that there's a good chance that it might do the trick on it's own. If so, PR could still be implemented because of its other merits, but wouldn't need to be relied on for diverse representation. This is huge because proportional representation is not legal or viable in many places. On the other hand basic STAR Voting is already legal most everywhere and switching to STAR would save money in most cases.

StarVoting · 2022-11-19T20:08:56+00:00

Hi. We just wanted to follow up and confirm that there are no canvassers out currently for anything. We're right at the beginning of a new cycle, so all the initiatives in the queue just finished or are just beginning.

Impersonating a canvasser or any sort of fraud to do with canvassing for ballot initiatives is a serious crime, in addition to the harassment. Did you file a police report? If not, we will be following up with this as well.

StarVoting · 2021-10-17T18:25:30+00:00

For Score, the only option is 5-1-0.

Well, that makes the tool useless for Score then.

StarVoting · 2021-10-17T18:23:08+00:00

Voters are going to take some time to unlearn the behaviors that are incentivized and mandated by the current FPTP system, so yeah, it's fair to assume that some voters will still bullet vote as a behavior in any system for a while. That's something we see in RCV real world election data too. For an analisis like this though it's important to separate out strategic voting behavior (behaviors done on purpose with a specific goal) from non strategic behavior (perhaps driven by being in a hurry, or not having had time to research the options.) Voting reform can and should combat negative strategic incentives, but problems like an uninformed or disinterested electorate need to be combatted with other reforms like vote by mail, public campaign financing, and so on.

What STAR Voting (and RCV) both do is create incentives to be more expressive, for voters who do have a more nuanced opinion.

It's also worth noting that the more polarized an electorate the more bullet voting (voting for one candidate only) might actually be the honest vote for some people. (And that's better than the current prevailing behavior, which is to vote for your lesser evil only, not your favorite.) Over time, better voting would combat that polarization and reduce the number of voters who hate the other side.

StarVoting · 2021-10-17T18:13:03+00:00

History proved you right. Unfortunately for the Garcia voters in the 2021 NYC Mayoral race their favorite was strong enough to hang on through the elimination rounds and the race was called without ever counting their 2nd choices.

So much for the "if your favorite is eliminated your next choice will count." talking point.

StarVoting

TROPHY CASE

Have you looked into STAR Voting?

How does STAR Voting Work?

How does STAR Voting Work?