Clark County, Washington — Portland Metro

A community
engineered
to govern itself
well.

Every other improvement in your life — your phone, your car, your building's HVAC — benefited from decades of engineering refinement. Your HOA didn't. Arroyo Commons is changing that.

Learn the model →
25mi
From Portland
0%
State Income Tax
EBJ
Governance Model
Day 1
Better Governance
Election by Jury Score Voting Walkable Design Washington State Portland Metro No Income Tax HOA Innovation Clark County Mixed Use Front Porch Culture Election by Jury Score Voting Walkable Design Washington State Portland Metro No Income Tax HOA Innovation Clark County Mixed Use Front Porch Culture
The Core Thesis

Governance is a product.
It's time to engineer it.

Your phone has an OLED screen because consumers pay a premium for better display technology. Nobody asked them to understand quantum tunneling — they just wanted a better screen. The same logic applies to community governance. Residents don't need to understand sortition theory. They just need to live somewhere that functions better, makes smarter decisions, and doesn't turn into an HOA nightmare. Arroyo Commons builds that community from the ground up, with better governance baked into the founding documents — not bolted on afterward when it's too late.

01 — The Problem
HOA governance is broken by design. Standard elections reward whoever shows up most often and argues loudest. Communities get captured by organized factions. Boards make bad decisions. Property values suffer.
02 — The Insight
Better governance is a market-priced feature. People pay a premium to live near good schools, low crime, functional government. A demonstrably well-governed community commands the same premium — and compounds it over time.
03 — The Solution
Election by Jury replaces mob voting with deliberation. A randomly selected, demographically representative jury evaluates candidates through days of structured presentation — the same process we trust for criminal trials. Score voting selects the candidate most preferred by the most people.
04 — The Strategy
Write it into the HOA Declaration on day one. Private contract, not politics. Residents who buy in agree to the governance model. It can't be repealed by a faction — only by a supermajority of all residents plus a voter election.
How It Works

From founding document
to lasting governance.

Aerial view of Arroyo Commons — Pacific Northwest new urbanist community
01
The Candidate Forum

Before each HOA board election, all candidates present to a multi-day forum open to all residents. Presentations, Q&A, and cross-examination — not a 90-second stump speech. Remote participation is provided so no one is excluded by schedule or geography.

02
The Governance Jury

Every resident who attends the Forum is eligible to vote — that's the jury. Random by self-selection, not pre-screened. People who care enough to show up are the people who should elect the board. Their ballots are cast in secret.

03
Score Voting

Jury members score each candidate 0–5. The highest aggregate score wins. No strategic voting, no vote-splitting, no spoiler effect. The candidate most broadly preferred by the most people wins — every time, by design.

Score voting ballot — Arroyo Commons community election
The Governance Model

Election by Jury.
Twenty years of research.

Standard elections are structurally broken. They select for the ability to campaign — a completely different skill set from the ability to govern. They reward charisma, fundraising, and demagoguery. They produce officials who are systematically wealthier, more narcissistic, and more ideologically extreme than the populations they represent. Election by Jury replaces this broken mechanism with something we already trust for the highest-stakes decisions in our legal system: a randomly selected, deliberating jury that evaluates candidates on merit.

www.electionbyjury.org →
Candidate Forum — Arroyo Commons community hall with score voting screen
R
Random Selection
The jury is demographically representative — self-selected by willingness to participate, not filtered by wealth, party, or education.
D
Deliberation
Multi-day Forum with presentations, cross-examination, and expert testimony. Punishes grandstanding. Rewards genuine competence and honest reasoning.
S
Score Voting
Secret ballot, 0–5 scale. No strategic voting. No spoiler effect. Mathematically selects the candidate most preferred by the most jurors.
A
Anti-Capture Design
The jury is ephemeral. You cannot lobby or bribe jurors you don't know exist before they're seated. Elite capture is structurally impossible.
Location

Clark County, Washington.
Portland's backyard, done right.

Clark County — Portland Metro Area
Aerial view — Arroyo Commons Pacific Northwest community
Columbia River
Portland
Camas
Battle Ground
◆ Target Site
Commute
25–35 miles to Portland. Easy I-5 access. Ideal for remote workers who commute occasionally.
Tax Advantage
Washington has no state income tax. Oregon has no sales tax. Clark County residents often benefit from both.
HOA Law
Washington's WUCIOA requires secret ballots but does not mandate universal suffrage. The Declaration controls electorate composition.
Incorporation Path
Code city at 1,500 residents. Charter code city (with alternative voting methods) at 10,000. Both achievable within a single development's lifetime.
Target Demographic
Portland-area remote workers seeking walkable community, lower taxes, and governance that actually works. The demographic already self-selects here.
Why Not Just Move Anywhere

What Arroyo Commons offers
that nowhere else does.

Feature
Arroyo Commons
Typical MPC
Portland Suburb
EBJ Governance from Day One
✓
✗
✗
Score Voting for HOA Elections
✓
✗
✗
Walkable, Mixed-Use Design
✓
Rarely
✓
No Washington State Income Tax
✓
Varies
✗
30-min Portland Access
✓
Varies
✓
Constitutional Protection from HOA Capture
✓
✗
✗
Path to EBJ Municipal Government
✓
✗
✗

Interested in building
something that lasts?

Arroyo Commons is in early development. We're looking for developers, investors, and future residents who understand that governance quality is a product — and want to help build the proof of concept.

Get in Touch Election by Jury →