07/07/2017
Voter Manipulation Alert
SALEM, Ore.-
Just a few hours ago, the Senate passed SB 229 C, with lightning speed. It passed in the House early in the afternoon and a couple hours later was concurred within the Senate. This bill fundamentally changes the people's referendum process in a preemptive attempt to rig the outcome of a potential referendum of the provider tax passed by the legislature.
Instead of having a piece of tax legislation be referred to the voters by the referendum process, and put on the ballot in the November general election, the Democrats voted today to have that particular referendum be placed in a special January election vote. Not only will this cost more money, but it is a blatant attempt to limit voters' voices when they are out for the holidays and for veterans who have a harder time voting in special elections. Some are calling this "the Grinch bill that stole referendum elections."
If that is not bad enough, the Democrats decided to tip the scales of how the ballot measure title is presented on the ballot. There will be four Democrats and two Republicans in charge of authoring the title that presents to voters what the bill does. In the normal process, these ballot titles are often litigated because one side will think there is a bias.
Further, if someone does have an objection with the title, the bill takes the final say of those ballot titles out of the hands of our seven member Oregon Supreme Court where those appeals are normally taken. Instead they decided to supplant the Supreme Court's final say with a more partisan Attorney General.
Some may wonder why the Democrats would do this. Well, their explanation is that they don't want THE PEOPLE to vote on the half-billion dollar hospital and insurance premium tax they passed a couple of weeks ago. This is an extremely disturbing excuse and legislative response to a POTENTIAL ballot initiative that has not even been referred yet. This kind of tampering with elections is dangerous to Oregonians' form of government.
Furthermore, the bill was amended with an orphan amendment. That means that there is no legislator to directly point to that conceived of such voter manipulation. This is not transparent. This is not the Oregon way.
But wait, there's more...
The Democrats also decided to put an emergency clause into this election manipulation bill. I have written extensively about the abuse of the emergency clause tactic. If you did not know, an "emergency clause" in a bill means that voters cannot refer the bill to the people. This is more than a slap in the face to voters; It is a complete betrayal of the transparent values of our electoral system. No matter what political party you are affiliated with, this bill, SB 229 C, should deeply trouble your sense of justice.
Sincerely,
Senator Kim Thatcher
Senate District 13
[email protected]
