STAR allows voters to approach voting by just honestly rating the candidates. The two most popular and least divisive candidates will naturally rise to the top and become finalists. Then, in deciding between those two finalists, everyone’s vote counts equally, whether you rated them [3 and 4] or [5 and 0]. That way, you don’t have to worry about strategies such as exaggerating the score difference between the two frontrunners.

STAR is promoted by two local voting reform organizations: the Equal Vote coalition and STAR voting for Lane County. Meanwhile, the two largest national voting reform organizations—FairVote and the Center for Election Science—have not explicitly endorsed it. I think that’s a mistake. And the way FairVote specifically has handled this is a big mistake...

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