Don’t Fret, Portlander: Your Fellow Voters Are Confused, Too

We tested public knowledge in Pioneer Courthouse Square.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: Campaigning for Tina Kotek along West Burnside Street. (Blake Benard)
By Aaron Mesh

Election season can be overwhelming. You open your ballot and not only do you not have an opinion on most of the measures—you’re not so sure you understand the questions.

A few words of comfort: First, we’ve provided you with endorsements offering our advice on every contested race and ballot measure in the Portland metro area. If you want to dig deeper, there’s video of every conversation we had with candidates.

Also, you’re not alone. Your fellow Portlanders are as confused as you are.

For this year’s Candidates Gone Wild show, we asked local filmmaker Zave Payne to conduct “man on the street” interviews in Pioneer Courthouse Square. Zave is a political science major at Reed College, but as a recent arrival from Northeast Ohio, he knows Portland electioneering can be baffling.

So he started simple: Who is Portland’s mayor?

The questions get harder from there. Watch the video below.

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