Interview with Blair Bobier on Oregon emerging as nation’s trailblazer for political reform

Longtime reform leader tells what led to recent reform victories, his advice for other states, his views on OR's use of fusion voting, and what has personally motivated him for so many years.

[Editor’s note: Oregon became the 33rd US state on February 14, 1859, and today is the ninth largest and 27th most populous U.S. state with 4.2 million people and over 98,000 square miles. In the last few years, the Beaver State has emerged as the nation’s leading trailblazer for political reform. Recently, the state legislature voted on the final day of the legislative session to pass House Bill 2004, which puts a proposal to use ranked choice voting for federal and statewide races (including president) on the November 2024 ballot. This was the first time in modern US history that a state legislature has allowed voters to decide whether to use an alternative electoral method for its elections.

As precursors to that bold move, Oregon’s largest city, Portland, voted last November by a 57% margin to pass proportional representation (proportional ranked choice voting) for local elections, following a near-unanimous charter commission recommendation; that same election saw Multnomah County, Oregon’s most populous (where Portland is located), approve single-winner RCV for county offices.  The snowball started rolling in 2016 in Benton County when voters passed a ballot measure for single-winner RCV for county offices, followed by the city council adopting it for Corvallis, home of Oregon State University and the county seat of Benton County. This has amounted to a small revolution and it didn’t happen overnight. It took years of groundwork and patient, multi-partisan coalition-building.

At the center of much of this activity for the past 25 years has been Blair Bobier, one of Oregon’s and the nation’s early pioneers of ranked choice voting. Blair is an attorney by occupation, having worked professionally as a public defender and then for Legal Aid, which provides legal services to low-income Oregonians. He also has specialized in election law, and was a cofounder in Oregon of the Green Party. Blair’s advocacy and patient leadership has always had a multi-partisan focus to bring proportional representation and ranked choice voting to Oregon and the United States.

I spoke with Blair by Zoom on June 29, a few days following the Oregon legislature vote to put RCV on the statewide ballot. It was a jubilant moment, and we covered a range of important topics, including his analysis of what led to these state triumphs, his advice for other states that want to follow in Oregon’s footsteps, his views on the use of fusion voting in Oregon, and what has personally motivated him for so many years. Blair is a savvy political observer, and his analysis and advice will be of interest for a wide range of electoral reform advocates.]

Steven Hill:  Hi Blair, I'm really excited about what's going on in Oregon, with RCV going on the state ballot for November 2024. I have goosebumps. And also really excited for you personally. I mean, you've been doing RCV and electoral reform advocacy work there for what, 25 years or so? You are one of the pioneers. I said to Rob Richie recently, if we had known how hard it was going to be, 30 years ago, we probably would have found something else to do. It takes a degree of naïveté to really do anything important, it seems.

Blair Bobier: (laughter) Yeah, youth helps with that.

SH: Yes, youth helps. It's naivete when you're older, when you're young, it's just like, sure, that seems like a good idea.

Blair, in just the last few years, Oregon has become arguably THE national leader on political reform, making huge strides in its largest city Portland, which passed proportional representation (proportional ranked choice voting) after a charter commission recommendation with 57% of the vote; as well as passing single-winner RCV in Corvallis, and also in its county seat of Benton County, then for Multnomah County. And now the statewide ballot measure. To what do you attribute this sudden surge in success and interest?

BB: It's been a combination of factors. I'd like to think we got the ball rolling here in Benton County, where we got RCV on the ballot in 2016 for implementation in 2020. Then Corvallis, which is the largest city in Benton County and a university town, did it on their own through the City Council in 2022. Then Portland and Multnomah County followed suit via ballot measures in November 2022. And now the state legislature, putting RCV on the ballot for November 2024, to elect federal and statewide executive races.

SH: Wow, for so many years of your and other Oregonians advocacy, nothing. And then suddenly…

BB: Yeah, I think some people look at this as something that's happened suddenly. But I liken it to the singer-songwriter that's playing in dive bars for 30 years, and then one song gets played on the radio and it's an overnight sensation. There are these different factors that all led to this happening.

I think that in Benton County we sort of made things legitimate for the rest of the state. You can do this, this ranked choice voting is a real thing. It works. We started reaching out to different groups in the community. We got a diversity of support, and we got it passed.

And we were very fortunate in Benton County to have a great county clerk, James Morales, who deserves tons of credit. He will tell you that it wasn't something he wanted to do, but he's a professional, he's got integrity. And once it became law, he realized he had a job to do and he needed to do it well. He was really receptive to communicating with us, I think that was integral to our success. We worked closely with the county.

SH:  Yeah, good point, that is so important. In San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and elsewhere, it was really important to work closely with election officials. As well as the voting equipment vendor.

BB:  After Benton County, Corvallis went next because it is within Benton County. So they said, hey, you know, we can do this here and because the county administers the city elections. And Corvallis used it in the 2022 election.

SH: Right. They didn't have to reinvent the wheel. They just had to do it by a vote of the council.

BB: After that, I think what caused things to kind of mushroom and explode is the interest that followed in Portland. Most people have considered the Portland city council and government to be pretty dysfunctional. So the City Club, an influential nonprofit civic group, started looking at reforming city government, and one of the areas they looked at was what type of election method should be used. They looked at proportional representation, they looked at specifically proportional ranked choice voting. I think they also looked at a couple of other methods.

They also looked at multi-member districts and ultimately a lot of what they came up with, in terms of their research and recommendations, was embraced by the Portland Charter Review Committee, which was empaneled a couple of years ago. So the Charter Review Committee then came forward with the proposal for proportional ranked choice voting for city council, multi-member districts, expanding the size of the council, and electing the mayor directly by ranked choice voting.

Portland is located in Multnomah County, which had its own Charter review committee going. So in the last election, both proportional ranked choice voting and single-winner ranked choice voting were approved for use in Portland and in Multnomah County.

Particularly for the Portland effort, there was this really diverse, broad coalition that was formed. And it was led and centered by communities of color. That I think has been one of the more important components of the success. And in shifting to a statewide measure, we were able to have many of those same organizations leading the effort in the state legislature.

SH:  Could you say a bit more about the coalition-building, and building that groundwork?

BB:  We have a relatively small nonprofit, Oregon Ranked Choice Voting, which formed after the Benton County success with the idea of taking things to a broader level, maybe other cities incrementally and then statewide. We made a very specific decision way back, to provide technical support, logistical support, legal support. It was important for us to just be in a support role. Portland United for Change put together a coalition that was at the center stage. Many of the organizations from the Portland campaign became part of the statewide coalition that supported our statewide legislation. It's really their movement and I think that's where the success lies, and we've been able to support that, which has been a great relationship.

Democrats get on board the RCV train in Oregon

SH: In Oregon, the movement for electoral reform was for many years led by the Green Party, since you were one of the founders and leaders of the Greens in Oregon. How did the Democrats get on board? To have Democrats introducing legislative bills and taking the lead to put RCV on the state ballot, could you talk a little bit about how the Democrats got involved in this?

BB:  It was kind of a stroke of luck. When we started talking in Benton County about getting RCV implemented, some people were dreaming pretty big and said, we can do this statewide. And I said, yes, eventually, but right now we don't have the resources. We're not going to be able to leapfrog and make that leap. But I knew there was a relatively new local state Democratic representative from Benton County who was interested in this. When he started running for office, people were talking about this young guy who was very progressive, environmentally conscious, pro-democracy. You know, that's my wheelhouse. And he's a lawyer and I'm a lawyer.

So I got a hold of him and said, let's meet for a beer. And we did. And right away he started talking about instant runoff voting, and for a second, I thought, OK, maybe this guy has researched me and he's kind of, you know, putting me on. But no, he really was interested in election reform and what we were calling instant runoff voting -- IRV -- back then, in particular.

The stroke of luck is that, well, that Democratic legislators name is Dan Rayfield, and he started working his way up through the ranks in the Capitol, and now he's the Speaker of the House. So RCV was one of his priority bills. He really went to bat for it.

SH:  Wow, that was a great stroke of luck. This progressive legislator, new guy on the block, you get to him and next thing you know, boom, he's Speaker of the House.

BB: But this wouldn't have happened but for, I think, all these different efforts and coalition-building creating the groundswell. I don't think there's been a second thought that Dan and I were from different political parties. In fact, in Benton County, I believe the guy who was Dan’s Republican opponent also endorsed the local ballot measure. There was the Libertarian running for some local office, maybe even against Dan, and he endorsed it. So we started building this multi-partisan group.

SH:  OK, but Dan Rayfield, he's still only one vote. Yes, he's Speaker, he has leverage, but he's got a lot of other priorities. He's got to use that leverage for not just ranked choice voting. How did the rest of the Democrats get on board for RCV? It was a strong vote, I think every Democrat voted for it except one.

BB:  Yeah, in the House. The folks within the statewide coalition did an amazing job of lobbying. Sol Mora, who was the campaign manager of Portland United for Change and then became lead for the statewide coalition, did an incredible job. They get kudos from all sorts of people in the legislature about the work that they did. And Dan certainly made clear that this was a priority of his.

And I have to tell you, one clever thing that someone within the coalition who came up with, and which many in the Capitol reacted positively to, was the coalition came to the Capitol and had legislative staff voting on and ranking things – like favorite State Park or best place to get a drink in Salem, the capital.  Sometimes they went around with candy or taffy or different kinds of treats to rank. And they went around with a ballot every week, maybe twice weekly, and people got to expect to see the ranked choice voting people. That brought a lot of attention to it.

SH:  That's incredible. Very clever. And then what happened in the Senate. That was pretty dramatic.

BB:  Yeah, in the Senate it went down to the wire. The Republicans in the Senate chose to do a walkout, so the Senate didn't have a quorum. The Republicans wanted to block certain bills around pro-choice legislation and firearm regulation. So for them to have leverage, they walked out and things kind of ground to a standstill. It took a lot of closed doors negotiations to bring them back into the building and to appease them.

And then once the Senate came back, they had hundreds of bills that were backlogged. Our RCV bill was one of the ones heard on the last day of the legislative session before they had to adjourn by the dictates of the Oregon Constitution. And because our bill had been amended in the Senate Rules Committee, it had to go back to the House for concurrence just on the amendment. So all that happened on the last day of the legislative session.

SH:  It’s hard not to notice that the state legislators applied RCV to every office but their own. Federal races, including president, and state executive offices, yes, but not their own state legislative seats. Was that due to constitutional restraints, or more of a situation of the state legislators saying, “We'll try it out on some other offices first, let them be the guinea pigs?”

BB:  No, I think that that came out of a little bit of the sausage making process. In part, that was because the county clerks and elections officials wanted to limit the number of races that it would apply to. So that, according to them, the ballots wouldn't get longer and more unwieldy.

SH:  So those election admin organizations were weighing in.

BB: They had been weighing in for years because we started talking to them once we looked at going statewide and there was a bill that we had in the 2021 legislative session.  So I think in 2020, three years ago at this point, we started talking to them and getting their feedback.

So ultimately, the coalition in consultation with its many partners decided to focus on the races where RCV would make the most difference. Most legislative races typically have only two candidates at best. So the coalition said, let's focus this on statewide and federal races.

SH:  That's really interesting. It's actually kind of a tacit admission about the “winner take all”, single-seat district  system -- there's never any competition in the vast majority of these legislative races. So why bother trying to change it? Let's do it only in races where there's actually competition.

BB:  Yeah, that's pretty funny.

SH: I'm just excited as heck for Oregon, for you guys, for the movement. This is a huge, huge victory. Even getting it on the ballot is a huge victory. Nevada is also on the ballot. So it's gonna be an exciting November in 2024. I've already been sending out notices to people in the California RCV community that they should think about how it can help Oregon, because it'll help our own efforts in California.

Living a life of public service

SH: Blair, shifting gears just a bit, I’d like to ask you, what has driven you all these years to continue with your advocacy? You are a lawyer, you could have done many things with your law degree and built a lucrative practice. But instead you chose to live more of a life of public service. Why did you make that choice? Why did you include advocacy for PR and RCV as part of that choice?

BB: Sure. I don't know that I had a choice. I don't know that I could have done something else and felt right about it. You know, this is what's resonated with me. You got one life so make the most of it. I've been definitely privileged in my lifetime, so it makes sense to give back. And in terms of these kinds of democracy reforms, initially I was looking at opening up the system, getting more voices at the table, because looking at the state of American politics and American society, things haven't changed a whole lot since Dr. King was talking about the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism. So how we can change that is really what I had been looking at.

And to me, it's kind of a little bit of reverse engineering. OK, if our government is perpetuating these catastrophic societal situations of people without housing and without health care, and environmental destruction and racism, how do we solve that? Well, can we get more voices in government? But how do you get more voices in government and make it more representative? Well, I went to a lecture by this guy named Steve Hill 30 some years ago (Laughter). I learned about proportional representation and that's actually what interested me at first.

And then kind of the whole IRV (instant runoff voting) movement took off and that seemed like something that was doable and applicable and achievable for local and state offices, and it just made sense to focus on that. And I guess I'm just stubborn and figured that I would focus on one thing and hopefully get good at it and do good with it.

SH:  Speaking of being good, recently a California activist told me you give the best presentation on how P-RCV works. I've seen you do it and you are really good. What is your advice to people who are trying to explain, especially proportional RCV, about how to give an effective presentation?

BB: I try to keep it as simple as possible. I learned from Steve Chessin from Californians for Electoral Reform, I remember Steve pulling out the old VHS boxes, which he used to represent ballots, and showing how votes transfer.  Many people like myself are visual learners. So trying to make things as visual and apparent as possible is effective.

Another thing, very simple, but I actually practice for my presentations, just to hear myself talking out loud and try to practice as much as possible so that it is relatively effortless. I can just kind of follow my own script and time myself if need be.

SH: Right, good points. And in terms of your focus on proportional voting, it also is an electoral reform that is crucial to the Green Party's future, so you moved into Green politics in a fairly major way.

BB:  I did and I think, well back in the old days, that was something that was really driving me. But the more I learned about how the election methods affect elections and governance, the more I became interested in these alternative voting methods and what they do for democracy. Like, you know, looking at different races statistically and saying, look at all these people that win without a majority vote, that means most people are voting for losing candidates. That can't be right.

And then being down in the Bay area and seeing how RCV affected campaigning, that people are actually being positive and having cooperative campaigns. That just changes the dynamics of things, which is something that we really need. So yeah, that has been really motivating.

SH:   Shifting gears a bit:  What did your parents do? Were they political activists at all, or organizers? Have they been supportive of your work? Or are they like, Blair, what are you doing with your life? Proportional what? What the heck are you talking about?

BB:  You know, I think they were mystified in some ways, but...they were not political organizers but they were good people who did the right thing. I love this story that my Dad revealed later in his life that he was stationed in Texas in World War II, and he had a friend who was African American, and they used to go to town from the base. And my dad would ride in the back of the bus with his friend. And this was like 10 years before Rosa Parks in the Montgomery bus boycott. My Dad is a pretty quiet, reserved guy, but my parents really had a sense of what's right in social justice. That was the underpinning.

SH:  That's really interesting. My father had a similar experience, going to school in Mississippi in the late 1940s.

BB:  My folks are Jewish, my mom's a classic Jewish mother. So I talked to her before the vote was happening in the Oregon House on our RCV bill. And she said, well, I'm sure they're going to mention your name. And I said, Mom, it doesn't work that way. So we go and we sit in the House gallery and we were watching the vote. And Speaker Rayfield, he says, you know, he does this great speech. Then he says, “so and so helped pass this bill,” and he names some people and organizations, including “…Blair Bobier.” So I had to call my Mom afterwards and say, “You were right, they mentioned my name.” And she's like, I knew it, I knew it, I told you!

Lessons for reformers

SH:  So looking back on it, do you have any lessons that you have learned that you think could be imparted to a new up-and-coming generation of reformers?

BB:  Yes, certainly. The lessons that I have drawn from all this, I would say, are that activism is a marathon and not a sprint. That's one thing I learned. Persistence pays off. Yes, it's the overnight success after 30 years. Good to dream big and not let people say you can't succeed. Focus on specific projects and find good people to work with. I've made great friends through activism, yourself included. I think of how many of my lifelong friends I met from election reform or environmental work. Doing good work with good-hearted people makes all the difference.

SH:  Sounds like good advice for reformers at all levels of experience.

BB:  And I'd say be open to coalitions and realize that the proverbial politics does sometimes make strange bedfellows, because the first person I approached to organize the Benton County campaign was a Democrat. And then, you know, there was someone from the Independent Party of Oregon and the Libertarians and a Republican. You got to be open to working with people who think differently than you.

SH:  Find that common ground and...

BB:  Exactly.

SH:  Many in California are excited to see our neighbor to the north taking this big step. Do you think RCV advocates in California should learn from what is going on in Oregon? Do you have any advice? Especially since you worked here in San Francisco for New America for a couple of years, doing political reform work.

BB:  Given that the Bay Area in many ways is sort of the birthplace of the modern American RCV movement, it's presumptuous of me to give people in California advice. But what I will say is that, having a coalition-centered approach has really worked here. Getting civic organizations involved. Again, I point to that City Club of Portland report that I think had a major effect and laid the groundwork for the Charter Review Committee in Portland.

Also, the League of Women Voters of Oregon have been looking at election methods for years and their support has been critical. In our coalition we have a lot of groups -- labor organizations, the Latino Community Association, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, Tribal Democracy Project, PCUN, which is a farmworkers group, the Rural Organizing Project, Urban League of Portland, Common Cause, Community Alliance of Tenants, Unitarian Universalist Voices for Justice. The efforts in Portland, the outreach and education, and that coalition that took the lead to get the Charter Review Amendment passed in Portland, that's where a lot of this came together.

SH:  Yeah, I think for LA and “multi-everything” cities in general, where it's really hard to give adequate representation to all the various diverse communities using winner-take-all districts, passing proportional ranked choice voting via a charter commission might be the only way to get something like this done. You need some sort of charter commission that has weighed in to bring the different sectors and interests to the table, and confer some legitimacy.

For example, labor. I see you had a lot of support from labor unions. How did that come about? Why are they interested?

BB: Yes, different union locals. Folks in labor are already part of or connected with some of the other coalition groups. So there’s cross-pollination going on. There's been a progressive elections table here that has looked at different reforms. So it's been embraced by some union locals, and I think some of the unions use RCV for their own internal elections.

SH:  Really? That's pretty key, since it allows many people to get used to RCV. On another topic, perhaps you’ve come across a critique of RCV that is starting to pop up more and more, which is saying that RCV is not party-based, it's candidate-based – despite the fact that both proportional and single-winner RCV are used  in competitive partisan elections in Australia, Ireland and Scotland, and also in Alaska and Maine for single-winner RCV races. Go figure. And political parties are so important to the health of democracy, that anything that undermines parties is bad reform, goes this argument.

So instead of proportional RCV or single-winner RCV, some are calling for more of a focus on fusion voting as a step towards getting PR. These proportional RCV critics are instead calling for an open list type of PR, though their details remain vague. Oregon already has fusion. So could you talk about how fusion has worked in Oregon in your view, both from a democracy viewpoint, but also from your Green Party perspective.

Track record of fusion voting in Oregon

BB:  Yeah, so I don't think that fusion is going to be a transformative reform. I'm not opposed to it. I think there's a First Amendment right to associate with whatever political party you want, and for political parties to associate with different candidates and vice versa. But I don't see it being particularly powerful.

As far as the Green Party, the Greens seem to use fusion mostly with the Progressive Party, which is very ideologically similar. I don't think the Libertarians use it. I don't think the Constitution Party uses it. The Working Families Party, that seems to be a cornerstone of their strategy. So for them, I guess it's something that they believe in.

SH:  The Independence Party has used it a fair amount in Oregon.

BB:  Yes, as well. But you don't see those parties putting their own candidates forward necessarily. Maybe more so for the Independent Party, but the Working Families Party rarely, if ever, puts forward its own candidates. So it's more about trying to influence the dominant parties than asserting the power or independence of the smaller parties.

SH:   Interesting. As you're describing the Working Families Party and other parties that don’t run candidates, they only endorse major party candidates, that's not that different than an environmental organization that endorses a Democrat. It's just another influence group. It's not really playing the role of a political party if it's not running candidates, is it?

BB: I think that's a fair summary of it. And, you know, we have to look at the trends. So right now, non-affiliated voters are the biggest voting bloc in Oregon. They outnumber both Democrats and Republicans. There are over a million non-affiliated, nearly 35% of registered voters. So, you know, I think the major parties are either going to break up or disintegrate or go the way of dinosaurs.

So to me, I don't see the point in orienting reform towards party politics, when fewer people are joining parties and the parties themselves aren't going to be what they are now in years to come, and they're definitely not what they were five, ten, years ago. I think the best election reform has to focus on empowering voters, and also individual candidates, more so than parties.

SH:  Interesting. And how about the criticism that ranked choice voting won’t lead to PR, but fusion will?

BB: It’s worked just the opposite in Oregon. Fusion isn’t really going anywhere, whereas single-winner RCV already has led to proportional RCV in Portland. There’s no question that us having RCV in Benton County encouraged the charter commission in Portland to seriously look into proportional. I think the two methods work well together, it's hand-in-glove.

SH: Yes, it worked that way in Portland, Maine too, interestingly. First they started using single winner RCV to elect mayor and city council, and then recently Portland voters voted to empower their city council to switch to proportional RCV.  Love it, the two Portlands, showing the way.

BB:  Yes, it's already happened here and I think we'll see more of it in other cities. Proportional RCV is the gold standard of election methods. It is better than any other method at giving voters some real choices and promoting diverse representation.  Looking in a crystal ball, I think we'll see more and more of that. And some years down the road, hopefully PR will get applied to the Oregon legislature.

SH:  Yes, seems likely.

BB: That might scare some people. But, you know, we're at a point where, again, we're looking at ways to create a more reflective democracy. And ranked choice voting is a giant leap forward. Then, proportional representation would be the next step beyond that. And I think one of the benefits of ranked choice voting is that it opens people's minds to using a different type of voting method.

SH: Blair, thanks so much, it’s been great spending time with you to discuss these important matters, and to catch up on our many years of advocacy for proportional representation and ranked choice voting. It's going to be an exciting year as Oregon prepares for the ballot measure in November 2024. Best of luck with it.

Steven Hill @StevenHill1776