Loomio
Sat 19 Jan 2019 5:14AM

What kind of STAR Voting should we recommend, now, for multi-winner boards?

SW Sara Wolf Public Seen by 143

There is currently a TON of demand to use STAR Voting for multiwinner boards, specifically State Central Committee elections for various political parties and neighborhood associations. These boards aren't single winner, so the question becomes PR or simple single winner? If STAR-PR isn't ready for prime time can we just adopt STAR Multi-winner for now?

PR There are currently a number of STAR-PR options, and conversation and study is in progress to determine which will get the approval of Equal Vote and our team. All of these options present tabulation issues and aren't a good fit for groups with bi-laws that require paper ballots and hand counting. The main concern is that we don't want to recommend a reform and then defend it before we've made an official recommendation.

Simple Multi-Winner STAR This is a big step up from plurality at large (the system currently used by most groups,) and it's a good stepping stone towards adopting STAR-PR at a later date. It was used by Whiteaker Neighborhood Assc. and also by Portland Forward for the 2017 SpringThing voting where the top 9 proposals were featured in breakout sessions. It can be counted just as easily as single winner STAR and elects the most popular candidates overall, not a proportional spread.