It doesn't mean what it says
Just as I thought they would, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that Measure 113 doesn't mean what it says, but rather what the voters thought they were voting on when they passed it. It was a unanimous decision, summarized here.
I have zero sympathy for the Trumpy state legislators who are being disqualified from office as a result of this. But their argument had merit. The plain language of a law ought to prevail over some story about what somebody was thinking. And one day a case will arise in which this ruling will cause a lot of mischief, and the lefties won't like the result. You read it here first.
The real problem is that when we vote on ballot measures in this oddball state, we don't get to see the actual text of what we're voting on. Instead there's a ballot title, a very short blurb printed on the actual ballot, a longer official explanation in the voter's pamphlet, and a lot of hot air presented by proponents and opponents. But quite often there's a ton of crucial fine print that the voters never see, and now we learn that sometimes all this baggage, even the official part, is inconsistent.
If the caretaker secretary of state, LaVonne Griffin-Valade, wanted to do us all a service, she could come up with a better system. The ballot measure process needs to be improved so that a controversy like the one resolved today never happens again.
So a massive Democratic majority is essentially state rule, but everybody's OK with that? No wonder we keep riding the river Styx into the gates of Hell.
ReplyDeleteNo, the GQP members simply need to limit their “quorum prevention” drills 9 days a session only and deal with the fact that, in a democracy, you’re entitled to have a say but not to win. The GQP at all levels has basically decided that only GQP rule is legitimate and that anytime a majority of voters want something other than what they’re selling, the appropriate response is vote suppression, gerrymandering, stripping Democratic governors of powers long enjoyed by GQP governors, and refusal to allow business to be conducted — not just in crucial votes about the operation of government but on any policy vote where the GQP minority feels entitled to prevail.
DeleteTyranny is an interesting word.
DeleteTell you what, sparky - run some moderate GOP candidates instead of off-brand Trumpy knockoffs and maybe they'll win some elections and not get disqualified from office after voters clearly sent a message that denial of quorum is not a legitimate legislative strategy.
DeleteFind a gubernatorial candidate that doesn't piss off half the state, and maybe you'll win the big chair in Salem for the first time since 1987 and can appoint some judges too.
TL;DR: come with some policies that the majority of the state doesn't find reprehensible and repugnant, and maybe you'll win statewide a bit more often.
Reading over the whining about this in the press, I've lost the minimal sympathy I had for the GOP position. If they thought the measure would only take effect after the 2024 elections, they should have brought a ballot title challenge. They didn't; they hoped it would fail or, if it didn't, that they'd be able to pull a rabbit out of their hats and say neener-neener-neener.
ReplyDeleteThe full text of ballot measures is in the voters' pamphlet, along with explanatory statements and arguments in favor and against (if anyone paid for such statements).
ReplyDeleteNot always.
DeleteThe conservative pol's should just find a partner and rotate terms. One term I'll walk out, next term you do it. Lather, rinse repeat.
ReplyDeletePreventing a quorum should be reserved for the situation where the majority party is trying to make structural changes to the rules to lock in advantages that they would never want if the roles were reversed. I start with a position that where the majority is trying to jigger the rules in their favor to lock themselves into power, denying a quorum can be justified.
ReplyDeleteBut the Rs in Oregon simply want to nullify democracy in Oregon because their brand is radioactive (for good reason) and they can't get majority support for their positions on climate etc. All those walkouts are simply throwing over the chessboard because they are losing on the merits of the issues, and the Oregon Constitution never contemplated that the elected reps would act so childishly and with such disdain for voters.
So if we see any more of it, we need to finish the job with a constitutional amendment to make the quorum a majority of those in office.
If withholding quorum was so bad why were they getting reelected?
DeleteWhen a district's representives are accurately representing the desires of the voters in their districts why is it your concern? The quorum requirement combatted the sort of single party domination that had been running Oregon into the ground for decades.
It's clear that Portland's voters run the state. Look at what they have delivered for their own city. Why do a third of Oregon counties want to join Idaho?
You know the answers, you just don't want to admit them.
I don't have a problem with them being reelected to the legislature and advancing whatever positions they represent. But when they deny the quorum over policy fights and prevent the legislature from doing ANY business they're no longer representing their voters, they're denying ALL Oregon voters any representation -- preventing the Legislature from conducting business because they are in the minority is saying that the opposing majority should not be able to govern because . . . well, because we say so.
DeleteThe Constitutions in both the US and Oregon are predicated on majority rule; if the majority is wrong, well then voters will move away and towards the minority. As for who runs the state, it's the majority of voters. When I arrived here , it was the GOP who held both the Oregon house and senate and the GOP considered majority rule to be fine then, so it should be fine now.
Plenty of Oregon counties are on state and federal welfare and get their schools, roads, services funded by the hated urban voters. An awful lot of people in these same places then demand special solicitude for rural voters besides, insisting that if the urban voters who pay all the bills in this state don't bow and scrape and grovel to "rural concerns" that there's something wrong going on.
The rural counties are regulated to death in countless ways by the urban counties. They don't want the strings attached your urban subsidies, they want to be free of your enviro-tyranny. It's why they want to be part of Idaho (and Idaho isn't worried about having to subsidize rural Oregon).
DeleteI love this stuff. May Oregon go far, far, further left. I hope the voters drive every conservative voter out of the state. Portland, Multnomah County, and Oregon voters should keep getting what they want good and harder. I hope Trump wins so that Portland burns down the city center and dances in the ashes. Portland an inexhaustible engine of hate and retrogression.
ReplyDeleteSeems like DiLorenzo conceded that he lost out the gate, admitting that it's NOT just a textualist thing, and that voter initiatives are interpreted by looking at more than just the one line that they claim creates the issue:
ReplyDelete"The resolution of that dispute requires that we apply our well-established methodology to construe the text of the amendment, by determining how the voters who adopted the amendment most likely understood its text, including considering the information presented to the voters through the ballot title and in the voters’ pamphlet. That informa-tion expressly and repeatedly described the disqualification as occurring immediately following the legislator’s current term. Petitioners concede that that information supports the secretary’s interpretation and not their own. Nevertheless, petitioners argue that what they view as the plain meaning of the amendment’s text must control. They contend that the text clearly applies the disqualification to the term after the next term of office and is not capable of supporting the sec-retary’s interpretation."
No, he said it WAS a textualist thing, but if you folks erroneously want to talk about what the voters meant, there's no way to know. Read his actual brief, not the way the judges slant it, before you criticize him. Trust me on this.
Delete