$150K and 7800 votes = $19.23/vote - And we still can't find anyone better than the current City Council to run.

That says a lot about VOE, but what does it say about the average voter here?

Agree with Steve. Jack, you are pointing at the wrong place, although I can empathize with the choices between funding stupid campaigns and necessary community support functions.

If Mary Volm had qualified for VOE and pulled a better margin than she did, perhaps forcing a runoff, would you still feel that negative about VOE?

Somehow, we have to be able to fund truly qualified candidates who do not possess name familiarity. Mary did have that quality, but not to the degree that what-his-name, err Saltznan, Saltzman! does. (Senior moment, I guess!)

JB - I'm surprised at your position here. But then the coffee kicked in and I wonder if perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at my own position! I think it is a wrong thing that poverty may be a barrier when seeking public office. On the other hand you are absolutely correct that our system is a joke.

Do you support public campaign financing at all? I wonder if I do. I support the idea that money should play a smaller role within a campaign, but that may be addressed in a myriad ways. I've always felt spending-caps, or limiting the scope of a campaign, is the way to go, but there's that pesky 1st Amendment thingy.

My knee-jerk about Sten was similar to yours. But I did a lot of research on the guy and I like his ideas. His own fiasco with sewer billing would have happened to whomever was in charge at the time. Promise. His main 'thing' is homelessness, one of my own main 'things'. Plus, I think his departure was due to the 'SamRand' twins, plain and simple. I've got first-degree, second-hand, info that he was VERY frustrated with the three-ring circus down there, with a then impending financial meltdown looming, and bailed out of a misplaced sense of, "Fine, be a bunch of clowns, but you're going to do it without me.".

I'd at least be willing to give the guy a chance. On the other, I say screw the first amendment and let's cap campaign financing, or limit the scope of campaigns in general.

Weird election. I was surprised to see Burkholder go down. I was surprised to see Saltzman squeak it out, figured he'd fair better. One decent candidate and he'd have been whooped! That gives me hope. I was adamantly opposed to the two Constitutional Amendments, but not surprised they passed. Public ignorance there.

Huh. Oh well. There's more in a couple of years.

"Somehow, we have to be able to fund truly qualified candidates"

"We"?

How about YOU just write your own check and stop pondering how to contibute other peoples money to a candidate you approve of.

If Mary Volm had qualified for VOE and pulled a better margin than she did, perhaps forcing a runoff, would you still feel that negative about VOE?

Absolutely. It's an improper use of scarce public money.

7800 votes for 150 grand is a pathetic performance. Lister got something like 14000 in '06 when he ran against Sten and I don't think he had half that much money. Plus he was a self confessed Republican and Bush supporter which doomed him from the get go.

This also illustrates the power of incumbency. Saltzman won on a walk. Even a good candidate with public money wouldn't have beat him; you can't take out an incumbent in an even money race.

Are you folks completely nuts? How can you think for one second that turning the clock back will "improve" our system or deliver us better choices? What ending public financing will do is guarantee that the rich and powerful will control this city for THEIR benefit and not the average citizen of River City.

Plus, I think his departure was due to the 'SamRand' twins, plain and simple. I've got first-degree, second-hand, info that he was VERY frustrated with the three-ring circus down there

Agreed. And it's more or less been documented, and well-known in city circles.

Saltzman won on a walk.

I'd say rather that Saltzman won on a yawn. Less than 10% of Portlanders voted for him; about half those that did vote voted for somebody else. 53,000 people is less than one-fourth the population of SE Portland, for example. And if every one of those votes represented a Portland household, it would mean three out of four households *did not vote for Saltzman*.

Which begs a rather interesting question: if so few people actually even care about or support Saltzman, who does he represent?

It is not that public funded elections is a bad thing, rather it is that the public is almost totally tuned out.

I'm guessing that probably 10 times more people voted for an American Idol plaything than can even list all council members.

The problem, in my estimation, is that public financing is not the solution to the problems with Portland's elections. We do need public financing for state and federal elections, but its failure to solve Portland's electoral problems discredits it badly in the eyes of many.

That is, the reason the VOE idea is a flop in Portland is that money doesn't determine who wins Portland and Multnomah County elections anyway. All the analyses that show that 90 or 95 or 99.99% of elections are won by the candidate who spent the most are confusing cause and effect -- campaign donors are like any other shopper, they don't like to buy defective products, and losing candidates are defective products for all but the most ideological shoppers (voters). Thus, they give to the candidate who is going to win.

So it's not a surprise that VOE hasn't done much good in Portland, because inferior candidates winning office because of money is not the problem here (the other reasons that inferior candidates win are the problems). Just as if you treat cancer with aspirin, it won't work either, and aspirin is a certified wonder drug. It just doesn't happen to address the problem that we've got.

The best idea is to put VOE on the ballot to let people decide; proponents need to make the case. That's problematic for them because the evidence for the benefits of VOE in Portland isn't very strong, just as there wouldn't be much good evidence for benefits from giving cancer patients aspirin.

What's most interesting/sad about VOE in Portland -- and actually not all that surprising, given the actual dynamics of Portland politics -- is that VOE has NOT provided the main benefit observed in states where there is public financing for legislative races. Cornett is not some Mr. Smith who would never have gotten involved in politics because he didn't like to ask for money -- he's a political wannabe from way back who lives, eats, and breathes this stuff. Thus, the VOE funding was probably destructive for him, because it essentially tries to take the politics out of politics; if he'd had to raise money from private donors, he'd have gotten a lot more continuous feedback about the (lack of) traction he was getting.

The only problem with putting VOE on the ballot is that it's giving people a single yes/no choice about just one spending item, and a pretty minuscule one at that. What would be nicer is if someone like Amanda could persuade the four dwarves to put VOE on the ballot WITH a better alternative and let the one that gets the most votes prevail.

What's the better alternative? Simple -- instead of winning the whole sum as the prize for turning in your signatures at the start of the campaign, set up a VOE model that pays out weekly based on the number of endorsements from registered voters obtained.

That is, you start off the same, with so many signatures and so much money in small contributions -- but that just gets you 25% of the total funds available, so you can get your campaign started. To get the rest, you have to keep collecting and turning in endorsements throughout the campaign. You also let VOE candidates continue raising money, so long as it's in no more than $20 sums. Thus the point of VOE is preserved (insulation from having to suck off developers) without funding Don Quixotes' who have no real base of support outside their own circle.

Oh, and require VOE candidates to post a bond for every VOE dollar they accept, where they forfeit the sum if they do a Boyles. If a candidate wants public money, they should be willing to sign a note to repay it (with a bond standing behind that) should they be found to have committed any fraud in gathering the initial signatures or the subsequent endorsements.

OK, Jack, we got it. You don't like voter-owned elections.

So your alternative is developer-owned elections?

Whatever money is spent on elections is a drop in the bucket compared to PGE Park, the Tram, SoWhat, the toy trolleys, etc.

When VOE was being debated, I pointed out that Portland city council races almost always result in a win for the incumbent (I believe there were two exceptions in the past 40 years). Even the live boy/dead girl exceptions don't seem to apply to Portland.

By preventing the challenger from outspending the incumbent, VOE's spending cap makes the incumbent even safer. I referred to it on several blogs as an "Incumbent Protection Act" and I was dismissed as paranoid (especially on B/O).

The only way to gain admission to this exclusive club is to wait for an open seat to open up. There will be several candidates (as the plethora of VOE also-rans has shown), but the one with the most union endorsements and/or cash usually wins. You throw the Weinermobile into the mix, and even spending more money won't guarantee your victory.

While I agree with Vance that poverty should not preclude people from running for office, a candidate is only viable if he or she has wide reaching relationships with leaders in the community. Every candidate needs to rally community leaders to leverage that influence over the community in order to obtain volunteers and build a campaign. $150K is not enough money..not even close...to buy that influence.

My premise is that if a person has wide reaching relationships, that person can raise money regardless of their personal financial condition. If a person does not have wide ranging relationships, then that person is not going to win an election regardless of qualifying for public campaign money.

Fritz had those relationships with the nurses, its union and the southwest community. She could have raised the money to run for office.

The fact is that public campaign money is built on a myth that it makes the person "independent." Nobody in office can be truely independent and at the same time be effective because every public official must have relationships to carry out their goals. Those relationships go two directions, which is where compromise and negotiation take place. A real independent of the Palin Maverick pathos cannot be effectice because that person would isolate all of the people required to carry out an agenda.

Related is this: public office is a job. The person gets paid a decent salary that is more than several of the current candidates would otherwise get paid in the market. This city has spent to date over $1 million for one person, Fritz, to have one job. This is a ridiculous waste of money. How many more public jobs could be saved with that million, or the millions more to be spent in the future on this social experiment? How many homeless could be cared for during the same period of time?

Even if I were to ever agree with the concept of public campaign money, I would only agree to the actual expenditure if higher priority functions of government were properly funded. Not every good idea has the same priority as the core competencies of government: schools, safety, utilities, roads, parks, et cetera. Each of these services are underfunded but somehow we can spend millions on this stupid (yes, STUPID!) experiment.

Now that this idea has proven its ineffectiveness, lets get rid of it.

Voter apathy is apparent in this race, which VOE really can not solve. Of the 33% of Portlanders that turned in their ballot, 11% did not even vote in the PDX city council race #3.

The informational cost average voters are willing to spend for each race is too high. One telling thing is the number of votes the Rudy got. Was it because he ran a strong campaign or was it because his name was first on the ballot that was not Saltzman?

The at-large city wide commission system is the best incumbency\wealthy politician protection tool.

As I reflect on all I have learned this past year about Portland's politics I keep arriving at the same conclusion, we are only progressive in name. We have a very pro-incumbency system in place, not to mention, the wrath one gets for having the audacity to challenge it.

Here are my thoughts for possible solutions:

- Ballots need to be printed with the office that represent a voter the most, first. For example, state rep, state senate and city races need to be at the top of the ballot with the federal races at the end.

- I think that the citizens would be best served if we had 6 districts and an at-large mayor. Trying to get the attention of ~53K voters is manageable for community leaders that are well established in their neighborhood. Unless you abuse VOE like Amanda and use it to build your name recognition city wide.

- As for reducing the informational cost, this can only be solved with an well educated electorate. We are kinda screwed here since most voters get civic education from campaigns.

- Lastly, a more equitable voting system like Instant Runoff Voting should be explored for Portland.

I agree with Jack. This city has so many other more pressing needs than spending money on campaigns of weak candidates. The beneficiaries of this money are the advertising vendors.

For once I actually agree with J. Wurster. The all-at-large system is the single biggest impediment to electing truly representative candidates (and probably contributes to keeping minorities off the council). And we absolutely should adopt IRV. George's idea for parceling out the public funding bit by bit also makes a lot of sense.

"Whatever money is spent on elections is a drop in the bucket compared to PGE Park, the Tram, SoWhat, the toy trolleys, etc."

Those guys will always exist and just are looking for opps to suck money out. They do it by finding the hot buttons (condos, bike paths, solar panels, neon signs and MLS) and just positioning themselves.

THe contributions are just a reminder they are friends.

I'd be more in favor of a limit on incumbent spending in elections.

VOE money is a terrible idea, but if the voters of Portland truly want it they should have it. Of course Portland voters are so careless and disconnected that their standing position on this and all other matters is "I don't know and I don't care" so that opens the door to the implementation of all sorts of disastrous ideas. Which is to say that VOE is a terrible idea until you compare it to whatever is coming next.

City elections should take place in November when all of the other elections take place.

No one votes in May except for people deeply rooted in their own political party.

I'd like to see a good study on where Portlanders get their news/media. I think that a lot of Portlanders don't know very much about local news. I think that recent arrivals, especially the young ones, are probably completely clueless about local news and events.

What ending public financing will do is guarantee that the rich and powerful will control this city for THEIR benefit and not the average citizen of River City.

As I said in the post, voter-owed elections hasn't changed the political landscape at all, after years of blowing hundreds and hundreds of thousands. Dan Saltzman *is* the rich and powerful, and no amount of "clean money" is going to pry him out of City Hall. Just as the developer types play puppeteer with our silly mayor.

You might as well save a few lives by spending that dough on mental health.

"City elections should take place in November when all of the other elections take place.

No one votes in May except for people deeply rooted in their own political party."

This is correct -- the spring election is far more of a boon to incumbents than is the at-large system. Anyone who thinks incumbents have less of a stranglehold on wards than they do on at-large seats is delusional. Political machines much prefer wards to at-large.

Not only should Portland not have wards, Portland shouldn't even have commission "positions" in elections.

That is, there should be ONE race for all contested seats, a ranked ballot, and the top finishers win, forcing the incumbents to campaign against each other (and all the challengers). Allow up to 5x the number of candidates as contested seats (so that if there were two contested seats, allow up to 10 candidates to appear on the ballot) with the number of nominating signatures deciding the order in which they appear on the ballot.

If there are two contested positions, any candidate getting 33%+1 vote wins a seat (because only two can make that threshold); if there are three contested spots, then it's 25% + 1 for the cutoff.

You do the whole job in one election, force all incumbents to face all challengers, and give dispersed minorities an opportunity to combine their support for a favored candidate no matter where they live -- oh, and you save a fortune on line-drawing and court challenges to line drawing.

Absolutely. It's an improper use of scarce public money.

Ok, I expected that answer. We disagree here.

Ben's comment about "we". I do contribute to the candidate of my choice.

What ending public financing will do is guarantee that the rich and powerful will control this city for THEIR benefit and not the average citizen of River City.

Newsflash Sparky....they always will, and even if one gets into the club, they are assimilated to the elite government class of this state, or made irrelevant by those already in office.

I don't get this. For 50 weeks a year, you all bemoan how developers call the tune while City Hall dances. VOE is a step toward moving away from that. It's got flaws, but I'd rather keep it than go back to totally bought-and-paid-for elections.

One thing we need to recognize is that absent a shift to districting, this is going to be a two-step process. You meet the candidate in the first election, and presuming they stand the test of some time, they've got recognition built up for the next election.

"I don't get this. For 50 weeks a year, you all bemoan how developers call the tune while City Hall dances. VOE is a step toward moving away from that. It's got flaws, but I'd rather keep it than go back to totally bought-and-paid-for elections."

Correction: VOE is an ATTEMPT toward moving away from that, an unsuccessful one so far. No amount of tinkering with campaign finance methods will improve City Hall because Portland is still small enough and participation low enough that seats aren't being won because of money from contributors -- rather, contributors choose who to give to according to their read of the candidates' likelihood of success, and that's based on good old American Know-Who.

VOE appeals to wonks who want to be unknown outside their own small circles and then suddenly get inspiration to run for office but don't want to do the hard part making voters like them(and who like being able to blame other-peoples-money for their inevitable loss).

If you want VOE to survive, it needs to become a way to tie candidates more closely to the wishes of the electorate, not a way to insulate them from it. Maybe the system would work better if the city mailed every registered voter two wooden nickels with the image of Portlandia on one side and a serial number on the other. Make them out of recycled popsicle sticks or something. Put a bounty on them -- whatever $150,000 is, divided by the number of registered voters. The path to public financing would be that the candidates compete to collect the wooden nickels from voters, who would give them to the candidates (along with any other US money they care to give, up to $20). The candidates would turn in the ones they collect and get the VOE money credited.

Oh, and you'd have to give your endorsement to the candidate when you gave him or her the wooden nickel, so you couldn't just run around and buy them from your neighbors for a real nickel and turn them in for the full credit amount -- the voters would actually have to sign an endorsement if they wanted to direct a little VOE money towards a candidate. If nobody in town is willing to publicly endorse you during a campaign, why should you get any public money?

Dump the "Voter-Owned" boondoggle. Elect City Council in November, when people turn out. And, for Council, at least, have a 'none of the above' box - if the leading vote-getter doesn't outpoll 'none of the above,' a citizen is selected at random to fill the office. If that doesn't scare folks into voting (and better people into running), then there's no hope.

"Whatever money is spent on elections is a drop in the bucket compared to PGE Park, the Tram, SoWhat, the toy trolleys, etc."

Just because there are bigger wastes of money over there, doesn't mean that this waste of money right here should also continue.

It's a logical fallacy called a non sequitur and you just used it. There's no reason why all the wastes of money can't be dealt with - this isn't an exclusive-or situation.

Elect City Council in November

The reason the City Council races were decided now, in May, is because both candidates got over 50%. The May election is the City primary, but since it's a non-partisan election (ha!), there's no run-off if someone gets more than half the vote.

If there are two contested positions, any candidate getting 33%+1 vote wins a seat (because only two can make that threshold)

What if one candidate gets 68% of the vote, do you start over for the second position? (Since nobody else would be able to get 33%+1.)

You do the whole job in one election, force all incumbents to face all challengers,

Ugh, a logistical as well as a conceptual nightmare. How would you hold debates with 40 people? The more people you have on the ballot, the more likely the "name" person is to win, and the less likely people are to vote because they simply are too confused.

"If there are two contested positions, any candidate getting 33%+1 vote wins a seat (because only two can make that threshold)

What if one candidate gets 68% of the vote, do you start over for the second position? (Since nobody else would be able to get 33%+1.)"

Actually, and I skipped over this for brevity, you stop counting votes for candidates as soon as they reach the threashold for election (33% + 1 in this case). Once someone crosses the line and is elected, you award the excess votes to the next-highest candidate. If candidate McAwesome got 68% of the vote, you give (68 - 33)/68 to the next-ranked candidate on every ballot that picked McAwesome first. It's a pain by hand but easy for machines.

"You do the whole job in one election, force all incumbents to face all challengers,

Ugh, a logistical as well as a conceptual nightmare. How would you hold debates with 40 people? The more people you have on the ballot, the more likely the "name" person is to win, and the less likely people are to vote because they simply are too confused."

1) Notice I proposed limiting the ballot listings to 5 candidates per open position; since there are never more than three council seats open at once, that's at most 15 candidates.

2) Notice that most debates do not invite all candidates -- by making candidates compete for ballot listings (according to number of signatures gathered) you can get a pretty good idea of which candidates are serious contenders and which ones are Pavel Gobermans.

3) Most "debates" are worthless wastes of time to boot. But your supposition that multicandidate races favor incumbents is only likely to be true when you don't make incumbents fight each other -- like we do now, where incumbents enjoy a built in advantage of being the best-known name in every race. But if there are TWO or THREE incumbents in each race, they have to fight with each other and not just the no-names.

Does the $ 150g in "public financing" as in the Cornett Saltzman Volm race act as a brake on fund raising / spending by the incumbent?

Incumbency is a powerful advantage. Incumbency coupled with the almost unlimited bucks an incumbent can raise is unbeatable.

I've been around here since Goldschmidt the child rapist days. I can't recall an incumbent City Councilor / Commissioner being beaten when running for reelection to the Council. Someone up thread seemed to say it has happened twice in 40 years. Which years, which candidates?

I don't count the Scone's loss to Potter. The Scone lost while trying to move up from a Council seat to the Mayor's corner office.

Educate me, please, about incumbent council members beaten running for re election.

Thanks.

Didn't Bud Clark defeat an incumbant Frank Ivancie?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ivancie

Defeat in 1984

In 1983, a coalition of progressive activists in the city, disenchanted with Ivancie's politics, sought out a challenger to run against Ivancie in the 1984 mayoral election. This was a proposition that local political observers[who?] considered unlikely to succeed, given Ivancie's strong political connections with local business interests, The Oregonian, and organized labor. They found an unlikely candidate in J. E. "Bud" Clark, a local tavern owner and former beatnik. Clark announced his candidacy less than six months before the May 1984 election, but was widely dismissed as a "joke" candidate who had no chance to win the election.[citation needed] However, dissatisfaction among Portlanders was running high – the economy was in recession and crime was on the rise.

In March 1984—two months prior to the election—Clark trailed Ivancie by 35 points in one poll. However, the Clark campaign put together a large number of volunteers who canvassed the city. After an early May poll by The Oregonian showed the race tied, the Ivancie campaign replied with negative advertisements questioning Clark's religious beliefs (Clark has claimed to be a "born again pagan"). The ads offended Portland voters, who elected Clark to be the next mayor on May 15, by a margin of 13 points.[3][4]

What started as an election evening party turned into a victory party! No run off needed. A sweet moment in Portland.

Umpire / clinaman -

Thanks, I had forgotten Ivancie / Clark.

Clark / Ivancie was a mayoral race though, not a council race. Probably no real difference though, as both mayor and council seats are citywide races. JUst that its easier, IMHO, to oust an incumbent mayor as the mayor isd the one head honcho who gets all the focus / credit / blame while councillors usually get relatively little notice.

I had a great time running for the VOE, but measured that without the $150K the race would be unwinnable for me. My time / effort was better spent elsewhere (Yay!) but I met plenty of people who gave $5 because they support VOE - and not necessarily me. Maybe 20% of our 1000+ petition-signers. If I quizzed my so-called friends that number could go up to 40% or higher.

I was impressed Rudy did so well, plus he went on vacation for a couple of weeks + finished school. Multi-tasker with a big future.

Jasun's right, in part. Voters weren't intrigued by the slate. Though I pushed the subject off sewers & soccer and onto police reform & mental health, that didn't enhance.

I dashed for the cash - and didn't make it, but I think VOE is in general a good idea, especially if it can collect a stalwart steward and aim it's future path toward the state legislature. Imagine: for $10 million we could buy back our state government from public unions and lobbyists. That's a noble worthy goal.

I'd make one immediate amendment to VOE. There should be an alternative to the $5 petition drive. My suggestion is excruciating and a higher bar - attend 100 consecutive city council meetings. And no napping!

Travis- Brilliantly stated sir. I'm poor but think I could do better than Cornett ever could have. I was born here, and whatnot. I've got the Portland-aging-hipster-scumbag vote fairly locked down! Hehe. This is my attempt at humorously stating that I possess such relationships as you're alluding to, here. Anyway, being poor I've narrowed the scope of my critical thinking process too far, and lent too much credence to the notion of petty-consistency. Of course my knee-jerk is supportive of VOE, I'd stand to benefit greatly.

Alas, that's not honorable. A person mindful of their civic-duty owes it to their fellow citizens to deploy practical judgement. I've fairly changed my position after JBs piece here, and subsequently, after going through comments.

Well, what about limiting the scope of campaigns? There's certain precedent for shredding the first, why not here? It's important gravy, yo. For instance, how about your page in the voter pamphlet being the ONLY thing allowed for a campaign? Or a spending cap, if VOE persists, that limits private-sector financing to the same $150k figure? I haven't thoroughly considered the ramifications of subverting the first, here, but I have to be onto something. I hope.

Plus too, I could make a case that poverty has helped create a situation where I'm less-than social. Is that my fault? Should that play any role, let alone be a deciding factor, in elections? I totally agree that constructing a sound base of personal relationships is fairly the proof-in-the-pudding when it comes to candidate qualifications. But what about ugly, poor, anti-social people? Are their ideas, and potential, less because they don't fair well in popularity contests?

It's a sticky wicket to-be-sure. I'm am enamored with the consensus here. Pretty clear we all agree it's time to stop moneyed interests from leading us around by the wallet. Given that I've conceded a position I simply haven't had time to consider the alternatives.

Great post JB. Great debate folks.