May 18, 2004
City Votes To Damage Its Own Electoral Process
By A Nearly 2-1 Margin, Adopts Measure 26-53
Demonstrating that our readership is not quite as large as it needs to be, voters today adopted Measure 26-53, which the City Auditor, Willamette Week, and The Oregonian all improperly described as a mere "housekeeping" matter.
One month ago, we strongly urged a "no" vote on this measure, and earlier this week we offered further explanation as to why.
We wish there was some sort of real data available to illuminate the reasons for Portland voters supporting this measure. But we suspect it's because they fell for the misguided descriptions of it.
As we've argued, the problem with this measure is that it took the wrong philosophical position on our elections. Rather than confront the "problem" of having the winner of a primary appear alone on the general election ballot by converting our non-partisan primaries to real primaries -- where we would choose candidates but never office-holders, which would instead always be chosen in the general election -- the City instead opted to view the issue through an entirely unimaginative and ultimately less democratic lens.
Apparently a majority of voters fell for it. We suspect that if this measure had been on the media's radar from the beginning, and if that same media had elected to actually engage Portlanders in a conversation about it, far fewer voters would have supported it.
Or, at least, we hope that would have been the case. But as it stands this evening, the City failed its constituents, the media failed its audience, and the voters failed themselves.
Posted at 11:48 PM | PermalinkComments (10) | TrackBacks (1)
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http://bizniz on 12 Jun 2004
Comments (10)
John on 19 May 2004
Give us a break, B!x.
Your analysis of this measure's effect was thin and unpersuasive, whereas Gary Blackmer's was knowledgeable and sensible.
I, for one, read your critique as well as others and still voted "Yes" on the measure. By your analysis, I "fell for" some kind of media snowjob on this issue. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but you're wrong.
Perhaps you'll sleep better at night knowing that 35,392 people "fell for" YOUR analysis.
Lynn Siprelle on 19 May 2004
I have no idea how the flow of writing works at KATU, but to give Steve Dunn the benefit of the doubt, a lot of what the anchors read at many stations is not their own writing but that of producers and reporters. Granted, he's got a pencil and he shouldn't be afraid to use it (my anchors never were, and boy did I hear about it when I wrote something badly), but election newscasts are often pretty frantic affairs.
TimC on 19 May 2004
I agree with b!X. Why do we have a system that says that Randy Leonard, with 52.86% is hereby elected, while Lisa Naito with 48.46% has to run in November. Why not have the top two finishers, no matter the percentages run in November when turnout is significantly higher?
One of the realities of electing candidates in the primary is that the turnout among independents is significantly lower, since they have less races on which to vote. In this election, turnout was 52.6% among Democrats, 46.4 among Republicans, but only 27.2% among Independents. Let's elect our officials in the election with the most voters - November.
T D Williams on 19 May 2004
You're right on measure 26-53. Primaries should be candidate choosers and not office holder choosers. Too bad that more voters didn't get a clear analysis of the measure. Thanks for your part in clarifying the issues.
Mark on 19 May 2004
I agree that the extra scrutiny induced by having the top two candidates run off would be preferable. I also enjoy having the opportunity to register my dissent by writing someone in as has been the case.
That said, clearly there is a material difference between Leonard's situation and Naito's. If everyone who had voted for someone other than Naito had voted for the same candidate she would have lost whereas under similar conditions Leonard would have won. Thus Leonard has a much clearer mandate than Naito.
brett on 19 May 2004
Jesus, b!x. Is it not possible that voters are informed, intelligent, thoughtful, and yet still manage to disagree with you? Your theory is apparently that people who voted for this measure are either stupid, ignorant, sheep, or all of the above. Nice, constructive position there. I'm not even arguing that you were wrong in your interpretation of the measure itself - I don't think you were - but this demonization of people who disagree with you is repugnant.
Justin on 19 May 2004
Listen everyone, Bx "strongly urged" a no vote. He didn't just suggest we vote no, he "strongly urged" a no vote.
That being said, there's really no excuse for voting yes.
The One True b!X on 19 May 2004
Is it not possible that voters are informed,intelligent, thoughtful, and yet still manage to disagree with you?
Of course it is. It's also possible for them to have gotten suckered.
tomhiggins on 19 May 2004
Its not so much that the voters got suckered, I think its just another example of the lobotomizing of the publics attention span. There was no soap opera tied to the issue, there was no money involved and most importantly no one was being voted off the island or being crowned the new Amerikan Idol.
It was just about some silly idea called democracy. That has not interested the voting public in years.
Now if you could show how this measure would make our kids unsafe by allowing nipples to be shown to them or that one of the players is a cross dressing back up singer at Darcels who is dating a midget luchadore called The Masked Monkey then...then I can see the public getting interested enough to give half a dang.
-tomhiggins
The One True b!X on 19 May 2004
Well, the problem with blaming it on the public attention span is that there was no real coverage of the measure for them to pay attention to in the first place. But the rest of the analysis is sound: The measure wasn't sexy enough for the media to bother thinking about for themselves, let alone report on it for their audience.