If there is one thing that last year’s election proved, it’s that the election process in this country is not getting any simpler.
Thursday night, the Citizen Charter Review Committee held a public forum at the Amazon Community Center to discuss proposed alternative methods for conducting Eugene elections of city councilors that are intended to make the elections process simpler.
But the proposed changes only seemed to be confusing and complicated to many of the nearly 50 community members who attended the forum.
The Eugene City Council created the nine-person committee in August to review the Eugene Charter, the basic governing document of the city. The committee hopes to make a recommendation to the council in order to get a Eugene election reform measure on the ballot in September.
Community members repeatedly stepped to the microphone to express their displeasure with the electoral process and the proposed solutions.
“I feel bad; I know you’ve spent a lot of time on these options,” Eugene resident Bob Mylenek said. “I’m really concerned that it is too complicated. I don’t know if we need to get that deep so early.”
The committee proposed four options for consideration and public comment to be submitted to the City Council. The complexity and confusion of the committee’s options remained a consistent topic for many speakers.
“I’m not convinced that we fully understand the problem,” community member Kathy Madison said. The committee’s four options addressed several issues: proportional representation, instant run-off voting, ward boundaries, term limits and city-wide voting.
Many present at the forum spoke out against the timeline set by the committee.
“I have concerns that we are really rushing through a serious issue,” Terry Connelly said. “I think there are a lot of different issues that the public needs to be educated on.”
Another Eugene resident, Gary Cook, presented what he termed his “far superior” plan for the election process to the committee. Cook’s proposal would allow for a weighted council vote, dependent upon the councilor’s percentage of the vote in citywide cumulative voting, and the incorporation of multiple parties.
Councilor Gary Rayor also addressed the committee, asking them to think hard before proposing to increase ward size. He said that the small size of his ward allowed him to campaign door-to-door throughout most of it.
Rayor pleaded with the committee to make a final recommendation that is both tried and proven.
“I would like to see a proposal that is working somewhere,” he said.