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People Not Politicians highlights inherent conflict of interest after Oregon Legislature releases first drafts of district maps

PORTLAND—People Not Politicians released the following statement today after the Oregon House and Senate Redistricting Committees released their first legislative and congressional district map drafts.

“There is no amount of technical savvy or sophisticated mapping software that removes the inherent conflict of interest that exists when partisan legislators are given the benefit of drawing their own electoral lines—the fox is guarding the henhouse, ” said Norman Turrill, Chair of People Not Politicians. “Oregon voters should be choosing their politicians, not the other way around.”

Kate Titus, Executive Director of Common Cause Oregon said, “I appreciate both the legislative and public leadership to tackle this critical task of drawing new political district lines. However, these maps, or any variations thereof, will still require a vote of a partisan legislative body and Governor, or if they fail that process, of a partisan Secretary of State. This is not good enough. We need to do what an overwhelming majority of Oregonians support—create an Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission to draw these maps.”

In late 2019, People Not Politicians enlisted Lake Research Partners to run a statewide poll. Results showed an average 76% of Democrats, 67% of Independents, and 60% of Republicans favor an Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission.

People Not Politicians has introduced Initiative Petition 16 for the November 2022 ballot, to put in place an independent citizen’s redistricting commission to redraw district lines in 2024. Initiative Petition 16 is similar to 2020’s IP 57 which narrowly fell short of making the ballot only after Oregon Democratic Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum filed numerous legal challenges and delayed the process, despite a federal judge ruling in favor of the Committee last year.

“In the midst of voter suppression efforts nationally, we must lead with integrity in Oregon and make sure third parties and historically underrepresented communities are not left out of the process,” said Eric Richardson, Executive Director Eugene-Springfield NAACP.

The People Not Politicians coalition includes a full spectrum of Oregon’s voices for an Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission: Common Cause Oregon, the League of Women Voters, the Independent Party of Oregon, the NAACP, the Oregon Farm Bureau and others.

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As the nation grapples with its legacy of racism and how to move toward a just society, the right to vote and be fairly represented becomes even more critical.

In Oregon we have an opportunity to reform how voting districts are created and reduce the risk of gerrymandering. During June you can sign an initiative petition for the November ballot that would create an independent commission to draw state and federal legislative districts after the 2020 census.

Boundaries are drawn by the Oregon Legislature or, if it fails to act, by the secretary of state. In other words, politicians, not voters, create the districts that elect them. This is a conflict of interest that has often resulted in gerrymandering. The initiative replaces politicians with a committee of Democratic, Republican and Independent voters.

A coalition of groups, including the Eugene Springfield NAACP, League of Women Voters and Oregon Farm Bureau are leading this effort. If you received a petition in the mail, follow the instructions for signing and mail it in the postage-paid envelope. If you didn’t receive the petition, get one at peoplenotpoliticiansoregon.com. Signing the petition is one important, concrete thing you can do to strengthen voting rights.

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You are probably overwhelmed with our collective need to make our communities, cities, states and nation better and safer. In the midst of the ongoing fight against racial injustice, economic chaos and the pandemic, I ask you not to forget the need to fix our broken election system. Every state needs to tackle the problems created by gerrymandering, which allows the politically most powerful to draw the lines that shape our voting districts, which is how the people who represent you are voted into power. We need to take this power away from the politically most powerful in an effort to create a fair election process. Without this, your vote, your voice, your candidates can be effectively silenced. This has happened across the country.

Here in Oregon, and other states, we are fighting back. Please go to peoplenotpoliticiansoregon.com, read about the issue, then print, sign and mail in a petition designed to get Proposition 57 on the November ballot (you can also ask to have a petition sent to you). Proposition 57 would create an independent non-partisan commission to draw new voting maps for Oregon. I am a volunteer with Common Cause Oregon, one of a number of organizations working to get Proposition 57 on the ballot. Fundamental to the cause of justice is having representatives who believe in the cause of justice. Please help. Make sure your voice and vote count.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has killed several would-be initiative campaigns in Oregon because organizers can’t send canvassers out to gather the tens of thousands of signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot.

But backers of a proposal to take redistricting out of the hands of the Legislature are not giving up. They’re trying to do something that’s never been done before in Oregon: collect almost all of the signatures through the mail or the internet.

“It’s a long shot,” conceded Kate Titus, the executive director of Common Cause Oregon. “It will be remarkable if we pull it off.”

Common Cause is one of the government watchdog groups pushing to create a nonpartisan commission to redraw congressional and legislative district lines. Pandemic aside, this coalition already faces major political headwinds going up against the state’s dominant Democratic political establishment.

The stakes in redistricting are particularly high for political partisans.

Democrats poised to control redistricting

For the first time in modern Oregon political history, Democrats are poised to be able to draw political boundary lines next year in the Legislature without having to negotiate with Republicans. They control the governorship and both legislative chambers. In previous redistricting battles spread over the last 50 years, the two parties shared control.

Because of the importance of how these lines are redrawn, the fighting over this measure started soon after it was filed last year. Groups allied with Democratic leaders in the Legislature mounted ballot title challenges in court that delayed signature gathering. They charged that the initiative has several flaws that would make it unfair to marginalized voters. They also say the measure would give Republicans too big of a say in redistricting.

Our Oregon, which organizes political activities for unions and other liberal groups, has also filed a lawsuit — which remains unsettled in the courts — questioning the constitutionality of the redistricting measure.

“There are some real fatal flaws” in the measure, said Our Oregon’s executive director, Becca Uherbelau, who is “watching and waiting” to see what happens next.

The initiative wasn’t cleared for signature gathering until early April, when the entire state was under strict lockdown orders. “You can’t go out with a clipboard,” Titus said. “it wouldn’t be safe.”

Organizers plan mass mailings

Instead sponsors pivoted. They have raised about $250,000 — mostly from business interests — to organize a mass mailing that is sending petitions to 500,000 Oregon households containing more than a million registered voters. They are also sending out mass emails to their supporters urging them to download single-signature petitions, sign them and return them in the mail.

Backers need nearly 150,000 valid signatures from registered voters by the July 2 deadline, a daunting task even without the lurking dangers of the coronavirus.

“This is entirely new territory for any initiative-signature campaign,” said Norman Turrill, a longtime Oregon League of Women Voters official who is one of the measure’s chief sponsors.

But Turrill said he thinks the timing is right to get the attention of voters since districts around the country will be redrawn next year following the 2020 Census. Although many Democratic groups in Oregon are leery of this measure, it has been Democrats around the country who have repeatedly highlighted the issue. They have criticized several Republican-led states for manipulating congressional district lines to gain additional seats in the House.

Former President Barack Obama has formed a group, All On The Line, to fight against “rigged electoral maps drawn with surgical precision by politicians to preserve their party’s political power and silence the will of the people,” according to the group’s website.

The group is initially focused on redistricting battles in 10 states. Oregon is not among them, although the Democratic Party of Oregon’s 2018 platform supports having redistricting “determined by a politically neutral entity.”

Molly Woon, the party’s deputy director, said the party’s elected leadership has not taken a stand on the redistricting initiative. She said the central committee will decide at its August meeting whether to support or oppose measures that qualify for the ballot.

Still, measure sponsors say their own polling shows strong voter support for independent redistricting, with the highest support levels among Democrats.

Voters in Oregon “understand the importance of the redistricting process and the threat of gerrymandering,” Turrill said, “and if we can get this on the ballot, we think it will pass handily.”

The proposed constitutional amendment calls for a 12-member redistricting commission that would be made up of an equal number of Democrats, Republicans and voters who don’t belong to either major party. They would be chosen in a complicated process that begins with three administrative law judges picking a pool of 150 commissioner applicants split equally among those three political-party groupings.

Supporters say the process is aimed at driving consensus among voters coming from different ideological points of view. That is why it calls for an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, even though Democrats have a large voter registration advantage. Turrill, a chief sponsor, also noted that the measure requires that no redistricting plan can be approved without the votes of at least one commissioner from each party grouping.

Still, critics say the initiative could wind up leaving some people excluded.

“The real problem we have with this ballot measure is that it’s exclusionary of young people, newly naturalized citizens and people in civic leadership,” said Samantha Gladu, executive director of Next Up. Formerly known as the Bus Project, the group works helps young people get involved in progressive political causes.

She criticized provisions in the initiative that require commissioners to be registered within the same political party for the past three years — and noted that it excludes many people already involved in politics, such as lobbyists and members of party central committees. She said these restrictions can prevent the involvement of community leaders on the commission.

Two groups representing minorities, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon and Causa, have also raised these criticisms.

Turrill said the aim is to prevent seating commissioners who have conflicts of interest. And he said that the commission should be made up of people who have some experience and knowledge of the state and its communities. He also noted that there are provisions in the measure seeking diversity among the commissioners.

The measure is also supported by Oregon’s four local chapters of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil-rights group. Eric Richardson, executive director of the Eugene-Springfield chapter of the group, said he believes that independent redistricting should be adopted nationally.

“I’m not naïve to what is going with the Republican Party” in other states where it has sought to minimize the electoral clout of African-American voters, said Richardson. “But the thing is, we want to hold the high ground and be principled.”

Republicans joining in support of measure

In Oregon, Republicans have been active in supporting the redistricting measure. The other chief sponsor is Sharon Waterman, president of the Oregon Farm Bureau, which tends to back GOP candidates. Out of the $247,000 raised by the initiative campaign, $148,000 comes from business donors.

Rebecca Tweed is a Republican political consultant who is active in the redistricting initiative campaign. “The fact that Democrats for the first time could reapportion exactly how they want is even more of a reason than ever to have an independent commission do it,” she said. “And I would say that if it was flipped and Republicans owned the state.”

Like just about everybody else, Tweed acknowledged the difficulties of qualifying for the ballot. “They’ve created a program that at least pencils out the opportunity to be successful,” she said.

In addition, backers say they also are hoping they won’t have to depend solely on the mail and the internet. Before the July 2 deadline, they hope to have at least some in-person canvassing.

“We’ll get out there as soon as we can,” said Turrill, hoping that petitioners could help put them over the top.

One other petition campaign — for a measure to decriminalize possession of illegal drugs and provide more money for drug treatment – has also once again resumed to collecting signatures in person. Devon Downeysmith, a spokeswoman for that campaign, said in an email that canvassers are now working in some parts of the state where most businesses have been allowed to reopen.

Downeysmith said canvassers wear masks and gloves and place a new petition and pen on an easel that a voter can sign.

However, backers of this measure had already gathered around three-quarters of the signatures they needed before the pandemic hit. That was back when it was OK for petitioners to stand outside a grocery store and thrust a clipboard and pen in front of a voter.

The post In Face Of Pandemic, Partisan Redistricting Opponents In Oregon Pursue New Ballot Initiative Strategy appeared first on People Not Politicians.

Oregonians trust politicians to make decisions about what taxes are collected, how taxes are spent and policies that shape lives. But should politicians be trusted with setting up voting districts?

A proposed ballot measure aims to take politicians out of political redistricting. The measure would create a citizen commission to draw the lines. Would it be more fair? That’s unclear.

The new census will mean Oregon’s congressional and legislative districts will be redrawn. In Oregon, the districts are now redrawn by legislators. That could be putting the fox in charge of the henhouse — at least that’s what the groups supporting a citizen commission argue. The measure is backed by the League of Women Voters of Oregon, Oregon Common Cause, the Independent Party, The Taxpayer Association of Oregon and more.

It would work like this: It creates an independent, multipartisan commission of 12 Oregonians. They would hold public meetings across the state and draw up the boundaries in an open process. The goal is it would be done fairly, respecting communities and less manipulated by partisanship or other politics.

The proposal takes substantial steps to keep politicians out of it. People would apply for the commission spots. Basically paid politicians couldn’t be chosen. People who have recently run for such offices couldn’t be chosen. Neither could their staff. Political consultants are barred. An individual who has given more than $2,700 a year to any single candidate couldn’t be chosen. There are also requirements to limit the members from the two largest political parties and include nonaffiliated voters. From the pool of applicants, candidates for the commission would be winnowed by administrative law judges and would eventually be chosen by lot. The governor could remove someone from the commission, but only with a two-thirds majority of the Senate.

If you are interested, you should read the full text of the proposal, not just how we or its advocates summarize it. The website is www.peoplenotpoliticiansoregon.com. Supporters are trying to gather enough signatures to get it on the ballot.

Gerrymandering began before it was called gerrymandering, before the country’s independence. It’s the idea of drawing a voting district so it will get a certain kind of candidate elected. The name was immortalized in a political cartoon satirizing a law signed by Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry in 1812. The law redrew state senate districts to ensure Gerry’s party — Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans — would be strong and John Adams’ and Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists would be weak. It worked. One of the districts looked a bit like a salamander. Gerrymander was born.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been reluctant to decide when partisanship goes too far in gerrymandering. It would require two things difficult for the courts: defining what is fair and divining the future. What’s a clear test for fairness? There are many different ways to measure what’s fair. Fair to whom? Fair to what? As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, choosing one “poses basic questions that are political, not legal.” The courts would also have to look at a district and somehow know that in the future the outcomes it creates would turn out to be unfair — by some definition. It’s additionally unclear that the founders intended judges to decide such things.

These days, leaning on big data, political consultants have more tools than ever to draw up districts to get an outcome they want. Does Oregon need to change? Oregonians could do nothing. If legislators are making the redistricting decisions, they can be held accountable by voters, though it would be mostly after the districts are drawn.

An independent redistricting commission creates a way to try to minimize the influence of some politicians on the process. Commissioners will still have to make choices about defining what is fair. They will still have to guess if sticking the lines in one place will produce more “fair” outcomes in the future. We don’t know if the commission would be more fair. It might. It would get more Oregonians involved in making important decisions about how they are governed.

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Turrill is president of League of Women Voters of Oregon Advocacy Fund Governance Coordinator and past president of League of Women Voters. He chairs the People Not Politicians campaign committee. Titus is the executive director of Common Cause Oregon, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization.

Oregonians should choose their representatives.

This simple concept is the basis of our electoral system. It is embedded in the U.S. Constitution’s opening three words, “We the People.” And it is the principle behind a series of ballot initiatives that could reshape Oregon’s political future.

Under current Oregon law, state legislators redraw the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts after each census to adjust for population changes. This once-in-a-decade system was designed to ensure that each district contains roughly the same number of people.

In the 2020 census, Oregon is projected to gain another U.S. congressional seat due to population growth, which means not only will we have a new district and a new electoral vote, but all five of our existing congressional district boundaries will radically change in shape and size. Not only are congressional districts redrawn, but so are the 90 state representative and state senate seats that make up Oregon’s Legislature. Every single Oregonian will be impacted – every single Oregonian should be represented.

These significant changes make the need for a fairer process more important than ever.

Letting politicians draw their own voting maps is an inherent conflict of interest, like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. Politicians in power shouldn’t be allowed to draw voting maps that benefit themselves, but that’s exactly what the process allows for now. We need to reform the process to create a fair system so that Oregon voters are choosing their politicians, instead of politicians choosing their voters.

A diverse coalition, People Not Politicians, has united across party, identity and geographic lines to propose a fair and transparent redistricting system that puts everyday Oregonians in charge of drawing these districts. We are asking voters to support a series of measures proposed for the November ballot that would create an independent citizen redistricting commission to draw Oregon’s voting maps in 2021 and beyond.

The independent citizen redistricting commission would be made up of ordinary Oregonians — four members of the state’s largest party, four of the second largest party, and four registered voters unaffiliated with either major party. No lobbyists or consultants, big dollar political donors, party officers or elected officials would be allowed to serve.

The commission would draw district borders with respect to geographic and voter diversity, reflecting city, county or other natural boundaries, as well as language, racial or other communities of interest. Favoritism or discrimination against any political party or office holder is prohibited. Perhaps most importantly, the entire process would be completed with full transparency and public meetings held across the state, instead of behind closed doors in the Capitol.

This reform would put Oregon at the forefront of history. We are the latest voice in the chorus of activists across the United States calling for people, not politicians, to be the center of the redistricting process.

Oregon is known for its ballot initiative process which gives ordinary voters the ultimate say in the biggest issues facing our state. Likewise, our coalition of unexpected allies – which includes nonpartisan groups Common Cause and League of Women Voters, the Independent Party of Oregon, NAACP, the Taxpayer Association of Oregon and the Oregon Farm Bureau – wants to put people, not politicians, in charge of drawing our maps.

To be clear, this reform isn’t about taking power from one party and giving it to the other. The goal is to give Oregonians the opportunity for a fair, transparent process by which voting lines are drawn which will allow for more competitive primaries and general elections, for historically marginalized communities to be represented and for elected officials to be held accountable to their voters. It’s about unrigging the electoral system and holding our officials accountable to the growing number of people who call Oregon home.

Oregonians face a choice – to let politicians draw districts in a way that serve their own interests, or to reform Oregon’s redistricting process with a fair and transparent process to draw districts that represent all Oregonians.

After all, the Constitution does not begin with the words “We the Politicians.” In fair elections, voters pick their leaders, not the other way around.

The post Opinion: Oregonians, not politicians, should draw our electoral districts appeared first on People Not Politicians.

The redistricting of Congressional and Legislative Districts happens every 10 years. Oregon’s population growth means we stand to gain a Congressional district after the 2020 Census.

To ensure the process for drawing voting district boundaries is fair and not in politicians’ hands, People Not Politicians, a diverse coalition of Oregon voters and organizations concerned about good government, filed a statewide initiative to reform Oregon’s redistricting process. People Not Politicians launched this campaign in order to ensure that the 2021 redistricting process and every process that follows is fair, impartial and transparent.

The initiative would amend Oregon’s constitution to change how legislative and congressional district boundaries are drawn, creating an independent citizen redistricting commission to draw voting districts. Currently, Oregon legislators draw their own districts, often without taking input from everyday Oregonians into account.

The initiative would create the Oregon Citizens Redistricting Commission consisting of 12 Oregonians selected from qualified applicants – four Democrats, four Republicans and four others who are third party members or non-affiliated. Major donors to political candidates or parties would not be eligible. Neither would elected officials, political party officials or their family members. Commissioners would be selected to represent the broad diversity of Oregonians.

The commission would be required to follow strict criteria in drawing the maps and would be prohibited from favoring or discriminating against any candidate, elected official or political party, nor could they create districts for the purpose of diluting the voting strength of any language or ethnic group.

The initiative has already been endorsed by the League of Women Voters of Oregon, Oregon Farm Bureau, Common Cause Oregon, the Independent Party of Oregon, NAACP Eugene/Springfield Branch, Taxpayer Association of Oregon, OSPIRG, American Association of University Women of OR (OR AAUW), Oregon’s Progressive Party, and many others.

“When politicians engineer voting maps, they’re effectively fixing elections,” said Sharon Waterman, President of Oregon Farm Bureau and Chief Petitioner on the initiative. “Turning the redistricting process over to impartial citizens will take partisan politics out of the equation.

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