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Unfunded inclusionary zoning would do more harm than good in legislation to legalize apartments near the state's transit investments. But there's a way forward!
To dig out of the state's deep shortage of homes and control the crisis of high prices and rents, Washington legislators have passed a slew of bills in the past two years to boost housing production, including the re-legalization of accessory dwellings, middle housing, and co-living homes. But for two years running, the legislature has reached an impasse on a remaining zoning reform that's critical for curbing sprawl, cutting pollution, and making Washington communities affordable for all incomes: legalizing apartments near transit.
Known as transit-oriented development, or TOD, allowing lots more homes in apartment buildings where employment and transportation choices are abundant would make the most of public investments in transit and give people of all incomes more affordable options to live closer to their jobs, schools, and other neighborhood amenities. This in turn brings compounding benefits for local economies, the environment, and housing equity.
TOD has the potential to yield the high quantity of new homes needed to remedy the state's massive housing shortage. It can help reverse the historic pattern of exclusion in land use that's walled off our cities' middle income and low-wage community members. It's the most effective way to create low-carbon cities and towns. And it's an essential formula for preventing sprawling development into Washington's farmland and forests.
TOD is also popular. Statewide polling by Sightline in 2023 found that 82 percent of Washington voters---east, west, rural, urban, and suburban---support allowing more kinds of housing, including taller apartment buildings, near frequent bus and rail stops.
Getting past the TOD impasse
But while reforms have opened up formerly sacrosanct single-detached zoning to middle housing throughout most of Cascadia, only British Columbia has passed strong TOD legislation. It's the same story in the rest of North America: middle housing wins have been piling up, but only Massachusetts and Colorado have managed to get TOD bills through.
Middle housing reforms have passed with the support of unusual multisector bipartisan bedfellows, but those coalitions tend to scatter when it comes to legalizing large-scale apartment buildings. In particular, left and center legislators often deadlock over the question of whether statewide zoning changes to allow apartments should be coupled with statewide mandates for inclusionary zoning (IZ), the requirement that new apartment buildings offer a share of homes at reduced rents that are affordable to residents with incomes below a certain threshold.
Most lawmakers and advocates agree on the goal of creating mixed-income neighborhoods in transit-rich, job-rich cities that provide affordable housing options with good access to transit. And the intent of IZ is to attain that goal. Unfortunately, the IZ as proposed in Washington's 2023 and 2024 TOD bills would go against the broadly shared vision of connected transit communities with housing choices for people of all incomes---it would do more harm than good.
The inherent problem with unfunded IZ is that its cost impedes the production of housing. It's a preventative tax on housing when what we need for affordability is far more housing. Sometimes, when market conditions are just right, that tradeoff can be worth it---if it yields some affordable homes and doesn't reduce the overall supply by much. But in many cases, IZ backfires entirely, thwarting the construction of both market-rate homes and income-restricted homes.
The IZ in Washington's TOD bills was a formula for serious statewide backfire, especially in communities already struggling to attract homebuilding. Moreover, because the legislation targets IZ in TOD areas and not elsewhere, the extra burden of IZ would drive new housing construction away from transit. F

A field guide to ranked choice voting in primaries, general elections, and more.
General elections in Alaska. Closed party primaries and the general election in Maine. Certain party primaries in New York City and Virginia. City offices in Minneapolis and San Francisco. Military and overseas voters in Alabama and Arkansas. Ranked choice voting applies in all these varied contexts - and many more!
In 2024, however, millions of US voters will choose their leaders using the method known as plurality voting. Plurality voting is still the most common voting method in the US, even though it doesn't always foster the best outcomes for the majority of voters: unpopular or extreme candidates can win with less than majority support and personal attacks work better than discussion of issues, on the campaign trail through to the halls of power.
Multiple cities, states, and other governing bodies have sought out and demonstrated another way: ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting is simple. In trials and testing in advanced democracies throughout the world, the method has evinced benefits in partisan primaries, nonpartisan general elections, and others: it ensures that winners have the support of a majority of voters, prevents spoiler candidates from warping election outcomes, punishes negative campaigning, and encourages more diverse and less established candidates to jump in and run for office.
It's also adaptable. The variations in our numerous elections in the US mean that ranked choice voting can and has been used in a large variety of contexts: sometimes for local offices, sometimes just in presidential primaries, sometimes only in a general election.
As more and more states and localities look to adopt ranked choice voting, Sightline is here to walk you through how different voting methods can combine with different types of elections, with a focus on specific scenarios here in Cascadia. Voting methods include plurality voting (currently used in most US elections), ranked choice voting, and many others that Sightline has previously described in detail. Types of elections include general elections, runoffs, and primaries, the last of which can be further classified into nonpartisan or partisan, closed, open, or some blend.
This article will cover single-winner elections - executive offices like mayor or president. For more on multi-winner, proportional elections and legislative bodies, see Sightline's evergreen glossary for electing legislative bodies.
As a "field guide," this piece is longer than some of Sightline's articles and is intended as a reference. If you'd like, you can skip to the explainers of regional scenarios.
VOTING METHODS: PLURALITY AND RANKED CHOICE
Plurality voting: The status quo in most US elections
Many US elections determine winners through plurality voting. With plurality voting, also called "first-past-the-post" or "winner-take-all," each voter votes for one candidate. The candidate with the most votes wins, even if they only won a plurality (more than any other candidate) and not a majority (more than half) of the votes.
This method can lead to unrepresentative outcomes when there are more than two people running. If three candidates are competing for one position, they might all split the vote and the winner could be elected with as little as 34 percent of the vote. That means that fully two-thirds of the electorate wanted someone else in the office instead! With more candidates in the field, a winner might earn even less support.
Spoiler candidates have shown up in plurality elections time and time again. One of the best-known national examples is when votes for Ralph Nader in 2000 outnumbered the margin that Al Gore needed to win in key battleground states, allowing George W. Bush to win the US presidency even though Nader and Gore had more similar positions and a higher combined vote total.
There are plenty of regional examples, too: in Montana in 2012, Democratic Senator Jon Tester won reelection

A US Dataset on Election Consolidation
The best-kept secret of boosting voter participation is election consolidation. Moving local elections to the same ballot as national ones increases turnout more than any other election upgrade, often doubling participation in local races. Synchronizing elections is popular with voters, for whom it saves time and hassle. When asked whether to consolidate elections, voters almost always vote yes by large margins.
Consolidation also improves representation of voters who are working-age, renters, and less wealthy; dilutes the political influence of special interests; is more effective than unsynchronized elections in selecting local officials whose actions align with the wishes and beliefs of local majorities; enhances the accountability and legitimacy of local government; does not favor one political party over the other, nor any particular political ideology; and can save millions of taxpayer dollars.
At present, though, a large majority of US cities and towns hold their elections out of sync with national elections, a practice elite reformers started more than a century ago to dampen the influence of ethnic voters and their political "machines." These "off-cycle" elections are relegated to a wide range of dates that are locked in by state or local laws.
A trend toward election consolidation has emerged in recent decades and has picked up speed, with scores of cities rescheduling their elections to ride the turnout coattails of national voting and save money. Nationwide in the United States, more than 50 large cities (including almost all cities in Arizona, California, and Nevada) have consolidated their elections in the past two decades. In 2022 alone, a dozen localities passed ballot measures to move their voting to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Until now, no one has assembled a reliable directory of when municipal elections are held in major American cities and what laws dictate those schedules. Consequently, leaders, journalists, reformers, and scholars have been hard-pressed to understand the dimensions of off-cycle voting or track its trends.
This report presents and summarizes Sightline's Municipal Election Consolidation Dataset, a new dataset on election timing in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, and an associated interactive map.
The dataset details what state law says about municipal election schedules. It also includes election timing information for 420 large US cities---home to more than 102 million people. These cities include the five most populous cities in each state and all US cities of more than 100,000 residents.
By examining state constitutions and laws for all states plus municipal charters and ordinances for all these cities, Sightline identified not only when elections are currently scheduled but also the legal basis for those calendars. In other words, Sightline pinpointed what statutes leaders would have to revise to move elections from their disparate off-cycle dates to national election day.
All but five states (Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia) conduct their state elections on-cycle with national elections, and all but 10 states schedule all or virtually all county elections with national elections, according to scholar Sarah F. Anzia in her book Timing & Turnout.
Election information website Ballotpedia recently studied school board elections and found a distribution of dates similar to what Sightline found for municipalities: 25 mostly off-cycle states; 14 mostly on-cycle states; the remainder a mix. This report focuses on municipal (or city) elections, specifically city council elections.
A recent working paper from scholars at Boston University found a similar distribution of mayoral elections. In a smattering of cases, elections in US cities are consolidated with or identical to those for county governments. Among these, for example, are Arlington, Virginia; Butte, Montana; Columbus, Georgi

2022 turnout for every candidate contest reached a decade high.
In Alaska's 2022 primary election, turnout in every candidate race rose to the highest rate in a decade. Larger shares of Alaska voters cast ballots in the races for governor, Congress, and the state legislature than in any of the previous five elections. Participation peaked across the political spectrum. Republicans, Democrats, independents, and third-party voters all cast ballots at higher rates in 2022 than the previous decade's average.
The increase coincided with the debut of nonpartisan open primaries, where all candidates appeared on a single ballot available to all voters, regardless of party. Alaska appears to have followed a pattern seen in other states, where opening the primaries came with a turnout boost of at least a few percentage points.
Other factors that may have boosted turnout include an unusually large number of campaigns unfolding across the state, voter interest in high-profile candidates, competitive races, and exposure to election news coverage. Voter participation is a temperature check on American democracy. High turnout signals that citizens are engaged in public life and democracy is thriving, while low turnout indicates the opposite. Yet low voter turnout in primary elections is the default across the country.
In 2022, no state exceeded 50 percent primary election turnout. And only four states have reached 35 percent turnout at least once in the past four nonpresidential primary elections, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. In that context, Alaska's 37 percent turnout among eligible voters was commendable and ranked as the third-highest voter participation rate of all states in 2022.
Still, Alaska has ample room to improve voter turnout across the political spectrum and in the selection of presidential candidates, a process controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties. Continued low turnout in Alaska's 2024 presidential primaries, where the reforms don't apply, provides a strong contrast to the rest of the state's primary races.
PRIMARY ELECTION TURNOUT IN ALASKA INCREASED IN 2022 FOR EVERY CONTEST AND EVERY PARTY
The 2022 midterm primary elections in Alaska grabbed voters' attention. Turnout for all statewide races (governor, US Senate, and US House) exceeded 35 percent. Voter participation for the legislative races rose above 30 percent for the first time in the past decade. A vacant seat in the US HouseThe US House race unexpectedly took the spotlight following the death in March 2022 of US Representative Don Young, who had represented Alaska in Congress for 49 years. Young's death triggered a special primary in June to decide who would serve out the remainder of his term. The regular primary followed, as scheduled, in August. Both used the new nonpartisan open primary format.
Turnout in the regular primary for the US House race hit 36 percent, a record high for the decade. The race attracted a huge field of 22 contenders. All voters, regardless of political party registration, were free to choose any one of those candidates. The leading candidates also created significant buzz and media attention through their charisma, cross-partisan platforms, and name recognition. The top four vote-getters (Mary Peltola, Sarah Palin, Nick Begich, and Tara Sweeney) moved on to the ranked choice general election, which Peltola won.
An incumbent defends her seat in the US Senate
The US Senate primary came down to moderate versus conservative Republican politics. A seasoned incumbent, Senator Lisa Murkowski, faced 18 challengers. Murkowski had survived a 2010 Republican primary ouster to win a write-in campaign in the general election with the help of Democrats. She needed them again to push her over the line.
Her positions in Congress, a mix of support for abortion rights and opposition to President Donald Trump, while also protecting Alaska's oil and mining production and gun ownership reflected that. Murkowski's closest challe

Oregon's past statewide and federal elections are full of spoiler candidates and non-majority winners.
No one likes spoilers. Spoiled food, spoiled plans…and spoiled elections.
In 31 contests over the past dozen years, candidates for statewide or federal office in Oregon have celebrated victory without first winning majority support.
In other words, in almost one-sixth of Oregon races (16 percent), more voters selected non-winning candidates than cast ballots for the ultimate winner.
Take the most recent governor's race. Democrat Tina Kotek won with 47 percent of the vote---about 67,000 votes more than her main competitor, Republican Christine Drazan. But nonaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson received 168,000 votes, which was more than enough to swing the election.
Similar cases pockmark state election records. Third, fourth, or even more candidates have complicated over half of Oregon's gubernatorial races in the past twelve years. They have done the same in races for US representative, secretary of state, and state treasurer.
In all these cases, it's not clear if the person who won was actually preferred by the voters. If different candidates had run or if a spoiler candidate had dropped out, the outcome might have shuffled. These "plurality winners" may not represent the will of the people and might push ideas at odds with the desires of the bulk of the electorate.
Some states, such as Georgia, employ separate runoff elections to avoid this predicament. California and Washington use top-two general elections for the same reason. And Oregon could, like its cities of Portland and Corvallis, use ranked choice voting to ensure that winners earn a majority of votes.
Indeed, the availability of simple solutions like ranked choice voting makes the prevalence of the spoiler problem grate even more.
In general elections, third parties change the game
Third-party candidates influenced three of the past five general elections for Oregon's governor. And in a fourth case, the winner only barely logged a majority.
Even before the 2022 governor's race, Democrats worried about Johnson's candidacy spoiling the election for Kotek. They had seen a similar dynamic unfold in both 2010 and 2014 but in the inverse: it helped the Democrat.
Democrat John Kitzhaber won in 2010, with a margin of victory of about 22,000 votes more than Republican Chris Dudley but just short of a majority. Two third-party candidates each received almost enough votes to make up the difference between Kitzhaber and Dudley: Greg Kord (Constitution Party) with 20,475 and Wes Wagner (Libertarian) with 19,048. Either candidate could almost have been a spoiler, pulling voters away from Dudley; together, they very likely changed the election outcome just by running.
In 2014 Kitzhaber won reelection with 49.9 percent of the vote, which was much closer but still not a majority.
The 2018 governor's race barely ended with a majority winner. Although Democratic incumbent Kate Brown received more votes than her closest competitor, she had just 1,999 more than the total votes cast for other candidates.
Spoiler candidates show up on ballots besides those for governor. In 2016 Republican Dennis Richardson won the race to be Oregon's secretary of state with 78,580 votes more than the next candidate, Democrat Brad Avakian, ending Democrats' fourteen-year hold on statewide offices. But four other candidates received almost 175,000 combined votes, which was more than enough to change the outcome.
The same year, Democrat Tobias Read earned 42,000 more votes than his Republican opponent, Jeff Gudman, to win the race for state treasurer. But two additional candidates received many more votes than Read's modest edge: Progressive Chris Henry with more than 90,000 votes and Independent Party nominee (and former Republican state senator) Chris Telfer with more than 173,000. In 2020 Telfer seemed to realize that she might have diverted votes from Gudman, chose not to run, and endorsed Gudman

And the chance for stronger democracy it creates.
In a 2012 state legislative hearing, the lead proponent of a bill to consolidate local elections in November of even-numbered years said:
This bill would do one thing and one thing only. It would make Election Day uniform throughout the state…[it] ought to be a non-controversial topic. …This bill saves money. It increases voter turnout. …If we believe in representative democracy…we should support this bill.
Was the speaker progressive or conservative? A Republican or a Democrat?
What about the champion of a similar bill in a different state who said this in 2015?
"There is one major contributing factor to low voter turnout - the timing of elections - that could be addressed with a relatively simple policy change."
And how about the legislative sponsor of a 2023 bill in yet another state who proposed to move "every single type of election in the state…to our regular even-year elections" because "doubling turnout - that's all for the good"?
BIZARRE-PARTISANSHIP
The first speaker was the Arizona arch-conservative Clint Bolick, co-founder of the libertarian Institute for Justice. The second quote is from the arch-liberal interest group California Common Cause. The third is from of Montana state representative Mike Hopkins (R).
Is election consolidation (moving local elections to the same November ballot as national elections) a rare political case, then? Is it a reform where the left and right work together?
Not at all. To date, it's been more bizarre-partisan than bipartisan. In these states and others, proponents and opponents recite the same arguments for and against election consolidation. Indeed, if you go online and watch hearings on these bills (as I have done for five states) or comb through media coverage from a half dozen other states considering the idea, you'll learn that the scripts are almost verbatim but the parties keep trading parts.
SWAPPING SCRIPTS
An example from the pro side:
"It's better to have 60 percent of the people rather than 30 or 40 percent of the people choosing,"
Kansas state senator Damon Thayer (R) said in 2020 as he argued against unified Democratic opposition for consolidated elections. Three years later, New York state senator James Skoufis (D) argued incredulously for election consolidation against a phalanx of Republican opponents.
"You have 20 or so percent of voters deciding the outcome for the entire jurisdiction,"
he said.
"Why are you so afraid of 50, 60, 70 percent of voters determining who should hold these local positions?"
And one from the con side:
"[Democrats] will stop at nothing to manipulate the system to rig themselves into total and permanent power,"
state Republican party chair Nick Langworthy of New York complained in 2022. A year later, Tennessee House Democratic caucus chair John Ray Clemmons called a Republican's election consolidation bill a way to
"manipulate the democratic process for the sole purpose of consolidating even more power."
Watch enough of these hearings and you'll experience a singular combination of déjà vu and whiplash.
ROLE REVERSALS
Leaders' actions matched their words. Almost every state election consolidation proposal in living memory has split legislators along party lines. In red states, Republicans vote yea and Democrats vote nay. In blue states, vice versa. It's an unusual pattern that's possibly unique.
Often, the proposals were almost identical, even borrowed. In 2012, for example, the Arizona legislature passed the bill Bolick was testifying for (HB2826 2012). Championed by the conservative Goldwater Institute and supported by GOP mainstays like the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry, the bill won with three-fourths of Republican senators and four-fifths of Republican representatives voting yes. Republican governor Jan Brewer signed the bill, which almost all Democrats opposed, into law.
Three years later, in 2015, neighboring California considered a similar bill (SB 415). On