Oregon's Slide Into "Sham-ocracy"--One Party Rule and Assault on I & R

Oregon was a proud, early leader in direct democracy. By 1904 it had elected a Populist governor and adopted the "Oregon System" of Initiative and Referendum. (See the above map, where blue shows states where citizens have full I&R and the right to amend their Constitutions). But it's all under attack.

They took all our rights and put ‘em in a museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone

(With props to Joni Mitchell and Counting Crows)

Initiative and referendum (I&R) help citizens overcome the big-money advantage special interests currently enjoy at the state legislature. No wonder well-funded special interests are attacking I&R here in Oregon. They currently dominate the political process in the state legislature, but have far less success with I&R. They want to thwart citizens' rights to go around the gridlock. You've heard the attacks: a couple of out of state groups are behind measures, circulators are criminals you need to be "protected" from, and the elected leaders "know best."

Let's start with those elected folks. Looking at the list of candidates for the state legislative races on this year's ballot and the most important statewide offices, you might forget that there are two political parties with well over half a million registered voters each-- registered Democrats and Republicans. In more than a third of those state legislative races there is only one unopposed candidate running. They “won” their seats just by meeting the filing deadline.

That's bound to keep happening as long as partisan politicians are free after every 10-year census to draw districts with a clear majority of voters likely to support of their own party. A combination of extensive data on voters and sophisticated computers has made legislators more adept than ever in “customizing” districts to reduce competition and voter choice.

Such boutique districts often are contorted and cut through cities or counties. They dilute communities' common interests, all to carve out safe seats for one party or the other.

Legislators who represent such safe districts are less accountable to voters. They are more likely to cater to their party’s biggest contributors, or their own contributors, neglecting solutions to pressing problems.

Citizens turn to I&R to bypass this legislative gridlock. Sure, more money is always an advantage over less money, but despite the efforts of some big-bucks initiative backers in and outside of Oregon, objective studies show that money plays a much smaller role in I&R than in candidate races. Wealthy interests are simply not able to pass initiatives by outspending opponents, nor can they always block citizen-led measures.

Try as they might big bucks are not nearly as successful at dominating I&R results as they have been at dominating Oregon’s state races. Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.

So those with pocketbook power are trying to undermine Oregon’s initiative and referendum by unfounded accusations about
"identity theft" by petition circulators, and out of sight, the Secretary of State is strangling the process with administrative rules with no public input.

The initiative process presents an environment that consistently allows financial advantages to be offset by other political assets. Separate studies by Daniel Lowenstein and David Magleby show that even when proponents of initiatives outspend opponents by a two-to-one margin or more, most of these “big spending” measures lose at the ballot box.

—The Initiative Process: Where People Count, Paul Jacob from the book , Taking the Initiative, edited by Larry Sabato