Opinion: With STAR voting on the ballot in Eugene’s May elections, it’s crucial to highlight the system’s regressive tendencies toward representative democratic electorates
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Editor’s Note: The author of this article is involved in the organization Next Up Oregon, a group that endorses ranked-choice voting. This information was not disclosed to editors prior to publishing. A previous version of this article referred to the number of “votes” candidates received, which is factually incorrect. STAR voting assigns candidates scores or “points.” A previous version of the article also stated that STAR voting ranks candidates one through five, which is factually incorrect. STAR voting ranks candidates zero through five.  

Growing political division and discontent within the two-party system has led to many states, counties and municipalities adopting voting strategies, like Ranked Choice Voting, to minimize the common phenomenon of “lost votes.” Oregon has already passed a legislative initiative to implement RCV into its elections, which will be on the ballot in November 2024 and await voter approval. 
However, a new group is rising in the communities of Eugene and Springfield. They want to implement STAR voting, a voting mechanism that allows voters to assign numerical values to candidates and allows multiple candidates to score the same value.
Unlike RCV systems, which give one candidate preference over another, a STAR voting system would allow voters to rank all candidates on a scale of zero to five. This proposed system would be a regressive measure to an already dissatisfactory voting system.
Implementing a voting system that allows voters to score candidates the same ranking essentially creates a complicated and redundant system that can cancel out votes. And, it doesn’t accurately represent voting demographics through voting behavior. For example, if a voter rates two candidates the same number, there is no ranked preference, which would cancel out both votes in a collective voting pool. 
The subjectivity of ranking candidates is also widely problematic. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that voters who lean Democratic are more likely to hold a critical view of their party’s governing structure or chosen candidate, which would lead to lower numerical scoring overall. The voting pool is misrepresented by ignoring partisan voting behavior or failing to include structural barriers to prevent “strategic voting.”
The most glaring problem is that this system has never been tested before in a public election. 
Although STAR voting has been run through mathematical models and has been run through political simulations, this is not data but rather empirical evidence based on theoretical constructions of community behavior. In the two instances in which STAR voting was tested with primary delegation nominees, the voting preferences of the voters didn’t reflect the outcomes, and the overall voting preference did not show. 
The Independent Party of Oregon used STAR voting in the 2020 election to decide the preference for Secretary of State, with the two candidates who earned the most votes entering a runoff election. Republican Kim Thatcher and Independent Ken Smith earned the most points to proceed to the runoff, while three other Democratic candidates split the votes and were not able to qualify for the runoffs. The second runoff showed that Thatcher had won by 36% of the votes, with nearly 30% of delegates voting that they didn’t have a preference for a particular candidate. 
This, however, did not accurately represent the relative pool of voters; the Republican candidate received only 1,478 points, the Independent candidate  received 1,240 points and the plurality of the points, 2,931, were for Democratic candidates. This particular case study is a perfect example of the misrepresentation and structural flaws within STAR voting. 
In an interview with Brian Smith, the co-founder of Tribal Democracy Project, he mentioned some of the leading causes of how STAR voting would be a detriment to the Eugene-Springfield area. One of the main issues that Smith calls to attention is the disenfranchisement of communities of color due to the robust opportunities to vote strategically, compared to other systems such as ranked-choice voting, which would allow voters to “vote their values.”
“Our focus becomes how this voting system works in theory and in practice,” Smith said. “STAR voting, in particular, doesn’t satisfy a number of criteria, with the main one being, does it work to enfranchise voters? It doesn’t. Does it reflect voters’ preferences? It does not. Our communities aren’t petri dishes to be used for experimentation.”
Next Up Action Fund, Building Power for Communities of Color, APANO Action Fund and Tribal Democracy Project are some of the many organizations and 501(c)4’s mobilized against STAR voting. In a press release, Elona Wilson, the executive director of Next Up Action Fund, said, “People deserve better than a wild card system of voting, and that’s what STAR is — an untested system that makes it harder for people’s ballots to count on Election Day.”
The press release also elaborated on the financial implications of implementing STAR voting, stating that it would be a “costly change” that requires local elections officials to implement a new system, design, print and count ballots, which would be a “significant cost” to implement, especially considering the completely untested system.
Calling for electoral reform is necessary, considering the high dissatisfaction rate within electoral politics; however, Eugene-Springfield voters deserve an electoral system that accurately reflects and represents their voices. STAR voting doesn’t have the data to support this, and voters need a progressive system of reform, not regressive systems that worsen representative democracy.