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Our state has a history of enacting laws intended to make it easier to vote. A quarter-century ago, we became the first in the nation to legalize vote-by-mail. In 2016, Oregon modernized motor-voter registration.

Both have increased ease and opportunity for eligible voters to take advantage of our right to participate in elections. And both do so through processes that don’t tax our brains too heavily.

Now, however, there are multiple proposals that would, if enacted, change who gets to vote, how we vote, who we get to vote for and how those votes get counted.

Advocates for each assure skeptics that these changes are done in the name of fairness and opportunity. But, as we must vigilantly remind ourselves, this is politics — and, in politics, there are always motivations lurking behind any tinkering with how we decide who takes power.
 We’ll start in the Oregon Legislature which, on the final day of a session dominated by partisan rancor, approved House Bill 2004 — which will place on the November 2024 ballot a measure asking us to approve switching to a “ranked choice” voting method, for state and federal offices.

Ranked choice, which has been adopted in other states and some Oregon counties, allows voters to list candidates in order of preference. If no one receives more than 50% of the vote, the candidate finishing last is eliminated and their second-place votes distributed accordingly, and so on, until someone gets more than 50%.

Consider the 2022 race for governor. Democrat Tina Kotek won with 47% of the vote. Were, say, independent candidate Betsy Johnson’s 8.6% of the vote redistributed, it could have put Kotek over the 50% threshold — or benefited Republican Christine Drazan, who finished with 43.6%

Not everyone is sold on the idea, as you might imagine. For instance, in a time when an increasing number of nontraditional parties are emerging, it’s worth debating whether the 50% mark itself should be the ultimate goal — particularly in states with a deeply divided electorate.

Still, if ranked-choice voting strikes you as one step too many, a petition drive has begun for something called STAR Voting.

Standing for “Score Then Automatic Runoff,” voters give candidates anywhere from zero to five stars. The two candidates who garner the most points advance to the runoff, where their star-point ratings on each ballot compete against each other.

If, say, you gave Drazan four stars and Kotek three, Drazan would “win” that ballot. Whoever emerges victorious on the majority of compared ballots would be the winner.

If trying to understand the Star Voting basics gives you a headache, imagine what it will do to the poor folks charged with tabulating points and runoff advantages.

Finally, we have the efforts of another petition drive, this one focusing not on who wins, but who can cast ballots.

The All Oregon Votes movement is asking that voters who aren’t registered as Democrats or Republicans be allowed to take part in primary elections — citing figures that show unaffiliated voters are the state’s largest bloc of voters.

It also wants to have candidates beyond the two major parties be eligible to run in those primaries to create, they say, an equal playing field.

Their ballot measure, however, does not go beyond supporting the idea in general. How such an open primary would be constructed, according to the All Oregon Votes website, would be left to a succeeding ballot measure, or an act passed by the Legislature — which would seem to put the fox in charge of the hen house.

Voting is our right, our privilege and many say our duty. We encourage finding out more about each of these efforts, as long as you have your pain relief method of choice nearby.