General Study Timeline:
January: League members are asked to read through the study materials.
February: The pRCV study committee will offer several introductory webinars. The goal of these is to help League members better understand the subject matter and ask questions.
March-April: Local Leagues will hold consensus meetings. During these meetings, Leagues are provided with questions to help guide the discussions. Leagues will review the study materials, talk through the pros and cons, and come to a consensus. They will send their consensus to the study committee.
May: If a consensus has been reached, the study committee will prepare a statement/position and submit it to the LWVME board.
June: League members will vote and approve of the new position at the state LWVME Convention.
What’s the time commitment?
Consensus meetings for previous League studies have generally run one or two hours.
While there will be time to ask clarifying questions, the consensus meeting is not intended as an opportunity to learn the basics of pRCV or how it compares to our common election methods. To this end, the study committee provides the following study materials.
Materials:
- Introductory webinar (1 hour): This webinar provides a broad overview of the material in the written study guide. Click here to view the recording. Powerpoint slides from the presentation are available here.
- Written study guide (1-2 hours): You could probably skim it in an hour, though there may be sections that you’ll want to explore in more detail. Click here to read the guide.
- A sample pRCV "election" (5-10 minutes): This is designed to identify the three pizzas that can broadly satisfy the participating "voters." Click here to add your vote, and then explore the round-by-round count to find out which pizzas are currently in the lead.
- Quick Explainer (3 minutes): Check out this cute video from Minnesota Public Radio that uses post-it notes to demonstrate how votes are counted in a pRCV contest.
- *Optional* Dive into the mechanics (1 hour): We've prepared a more technical webinar to better understand how the pRCV tabulation process can translate ranked choice ballots into proportional representation in a nonpartisan, municipal election. We've analyzed the cast vote record from the 2021 Portland Charter Commission Election -- so you don't have to. This webinar provides much more detail than you need to participate in the consensus process, but may be helpful to individuals who might not be easily convinced that the standard "demonstration" tabulations are capturing something real. Click here to watch the recording. Click here to access the powerpoint slides.