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Our voting system is broken, but it doesn't have to stay that way.

STAR Voting is all about the idea that we should be able to vote our conscience, our votes should never be wasted, and our elections should accurately reflect the will of the people.

How does STAR Voting Work?

★  INSTRUCTIONS: Voters score candidates from 0 up to 5 stars.

• Give your favorite five stars.
• Give your last choice zero or leave blank.
• Equal scores are allowed.
• Score other candidates as desired.

★  COUNTING: Add up the stars, then add up the votes. 

The two highest scoring candidates are finalists. Your full vote goes to the finalist you prefer.

★  WINNER: The finalist with the most votes wins!

Watch the How Does STAR Voting Work video

   
Why STAR Voting? 

Voting reform is the keystone. A single cause with the potential to empower us to be more effective on every other issue we care about. 

• Honesty is the best strategy. Strategic voting is not incentivized.

• Even if your favorite can’t win, your vote helps prevent your worst case scenario.

• Highly accurate, no matter how many candidates/parties are in the race.

• No parties, candidates, or voters are excluded. Doesn't give anyone an unfair advantage.

• Helps improve representation by leveling the playing field.

• Every voter has an equally weighted vote.

• Combats the influence of money in politics.

• Fights polarization and makes campaigns more positive.

• Can be locally tabulated using the current process.

• Fully constitutional in Oregon, and around the country. This is a nationally viable proposal.

• Streamlines the electoral process and saves money over time for both candidates and taxpayers.

• STAR Voting addresses known issues with previous proposals and goes further to deliver on the goals of the movement.

Resources: 
More information on STAR Voting.
Featured articles on STAR Voting.
Read the peer review on STAR Voting.
Featured videos on STAR Voting.

How is this different from Ranked Choice Voting?

STAR Voting was invented following the 2014 Equal Vote Conference on voting reform. The goal was to find a proposal that could go further to deliver on the talking points of Ranked Choice while addressing known issues with the older system. It quickly topped the charts in every study that included it. 

How does Ranked Choice work? 

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and STAR Voting have a lot in common: Both are more expressive and encourage more positive campaigns. With both, only one election is needed in many cases. Both can be used for single winner, multi-winner, or proportional representation elections … that said, there are significant differences: 

• RCV allows voters to show their preferences, but doesn't allow a voter to show if their 2nd choice is almost as good as their 1st choice or if they are almost as bad as their last choice. STAR Voting ballots show preference order and level of support. 
• RCV has high rates of voter errors that can lead to wasted votes and voided ballots if voters give equal rankings or skip rankings. STAR does not. 
• RCV can require many rounds of tabulation to find the winner. STAR only requires two. 
• RCV doesn't count all voters rankings and can ignore relevant ballot data. STAR Voting is tallied with addition and all data is counted. 
• RCV prevents vote-splitting if there are only two frontrunners, but it struggles in races with more competitive candidates. STAR is highly accurate with any number of candidates. 
• In RCV it's not necessarily safe to rank your honest favorite 1st. In STAR you should always give your favorite(s) 5 stars. 
• RCV requires centralized tabulation which hurts transparency, causes delays, and erodes trust in our elections. STAR Voting can be tallied locally, just like traditional voting. 
• RCV usually has long delays before results are available in competitive races. STAR Voting is always tallied instantly. 
• RCV doesn't scale well due to the centralized tabulation requirement, so larger scale elections are increasingly more complex logistically, more expensive to run, and more error prone, as we've seen in recent years. STAR Voting scales well. 
• RCV is unconstitutional in many US states for a variety of reasons. It's now been explicitly banned in five states. STAR is naturally constitutional all over the country. 
• RCV has been systematically oversold and many of the persuasive common talking points are false. Factual integrity is a top priority for the STAR Voting movement and we will never just tell voters what they want to hear. 
• RCV was invented in 1870 and it's inventor warned not to use it for public elections. Modern election science has repeatedly confirmed that it's only  marginally more accurate than traditional voting but significantly less accurate than most other options on the table. 

Change can be scary. If we are going to put in the work to educate voters and adopt a whole new voting method we owe it to voters to get it right.

Learn more about STAR Voting and Ranked Choice. 
Read the peer review on STAR Voting and RCV.
Learn more about electoral science and voting reform from the Equal Vote Coalition.

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