Oregon's Progressive Party Archives - People Not Politicians

Bids to take gerrymandering power from Democrats beginning in two states

admin — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 14:23:13 +0000

The Fulcrum | By David Hawkings | November 20, 2019

There are rumblings in two of the nation’s most reliably blue states about taking partisan politics out of the business of drawing legislative boundaries for the coming decade. And some of the Democrats in power sound ready to go along.

Discussions are in their early stages in both Oregon and Illinois, but a sustained drive to end partisan gerrymandering in either place would be one of the bigger stories of the coming year in the world of democracy reform.

Big changes in the rules of redistricting could also affect the balancing of power on Capitol Hill, in Salem and in Springfield when new maps get drawn after the next census — although a long run of election results suggest the Democratic dominance in both states will not be readily threatened.

The drive to take away line-drawing powers from politicians is much farther along in Oregon. Last week advocates filed papers starting the process of getting a referendum on next November’s ballot that would turn the cartography over to a commission of a dozen ordinary citizens: four Democrats, four Republicans and four who identify with a third party or as independents.

The next step is to gather more than 150,000 signatures on petitions. The organizer of the effort is People Not Politicians, which was born to push the successful 2018 ballot initiative creating a similar independent redistricting panel in Republican-run Michigan.

The proposal has already drawn an unusual range of backers, from Common Cause and the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group on the left to the Farm Bureau and the Taxpayer Association of Oregon on the right. Also endorsing the effort are local chapters of the NAACP, the American Association of University Women and the League of Women Voters.

“Farmers do not get to choose their weather. Politicians should not choose their voters,” the Oregon Farm Bureau said in a statement to the East Oregonian.

A spokeswoman for state Democrats, Molly Woon, said the party would not take a position on the ballot measure until at least next year, but may still be neutral after that.

The gerrymandering measure would become the second significant democracy reform proposal on the Oregon ballot in 2020, joining a state constitutional amendment to explicitly allow campaign finance limits.

At the Illinois capital, meanwhile, legislators in both parties have been in discussion in recent days about ways they could combat the public’s perception of a culture of corruption in state government. And turning over redistricting to an outside group has secured some bipartisan interest, spurred on by the advocacy group Change Illinois, which says the state “is a leading example of the harm that gerrymandering does to our democracy.”

“I think we do need to amend our constitution and relinquish the political control that lawmakers have over redistricting,” GOP state Sen. Jason Barickman told the Alton Telegraph.

“I really want to see us do more work on how we change the culture here, so continue to do work in that arena,” added Democratic state Sen. Melinda Bush. “How do we look at those issues? How do we make sure that the people that we’re electing, that we’re getting good representation? So looking at fair maps.”

More than 500,000 voters signed a petition to get an independent redistricting commission proposal on the statewide ballot in 2016, but the referendum was killed through a legal challenge by Democrats. Now, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker is on record vowing “to make sure that here in Illinois we’re not gerrymandering, that we’re drawing maps that are fair and competitive.”

Democrats have controlled Oregon’s government for 11 of the past 13 years and now enjoy significant majorities in the Legislature. The party has held all levers of policymaking power in Illinois for 13 of the past 17 years and also has lopsided control of the General Assembly.

So if independent commissions take over, they will probably have their biggest impact on the power dynamic at the congressional level. Very limited population growth this decade means Illinois is nearly certain to lose one of its House seats, which now skew 13 to 5 for the Democrats, while Oregon’s growth means it will gain a seat in addition to the four now held by Democrats and one by a Republican.

The fight against partisan gerrymandering has intensified in both state courts and the drive for ballot initiatives since the Supreme Court ruled in June that federal courts have no place deciding when a party in power has drawn maps that go too far to perpetuate that power. But most of the action so far has been in the majority of states where Republicans were in charge of drawing this decade’s districts.

Fourteen states have now assigned the drawing of the next state legislative maps to independent commissions, while just nine will use such panels to set the congressional maps.

The post Bids to take gerrymandering power from Democrats beginning in two states appeared first on People Not Politicians.

Editorial: A promising proposal to counter self-serving politics

admin — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 15:48:15 +0000

Oregonian Editorial Board | November 17, 2019

A proposed ballot initiative seeking to change how Oregon draws boundaries for legislative and congressional districts doesn’t sound like much of a barn burner. Filed last week by a group of good-government advocates, the proposal runs 12 pages long with the kind of procedural detail that only a true policy wonk will enjoy.

But Oregonians should give the initiative their full attention as well as their signature once sponsors secure approval to start collecting them. While there’s still much to unpack about the proposal, the central premise of giving a citizen commission – not elected officials – the authority to redraw districts is a powerful one that could reshape Oregon politics and deserves widespread debate.

Under Oregon law, the Legislature is responsible for updating the geographic boundaries of legislative and congressional districts across the state after each census, with the next revamp slated for 2021. If the Legislature fails to pass a redistricting plan, the responsibility falls to the secretary of state.

That hasn’t been very successful to date, with the Legislature passing a redistricting map only twice in 100 years, chief sponsor Norman Turrill told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board. But the high failure rate is only a symptom of bigger problems baked into this system.

There’s an inherent conflict of interest in asking elected officials to divvy up voters in a way that doesn’t favor their own re-election or party, as state law requires. Boundaries have carved up Clackamas, Salem and Eugene into multiple “oddly-shaped” districts that appear to serve the interests of incumbents as opposed to the public, as the petition states. All 90 state legislators are either a Democrat or a Republican, even though 40 percent of registered voters are neither. And with Oregon likely to gain a sixth seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, independent, nonpartisan districting is even more critical to ensure all Oregonians have a fair say in who they send to Congress.

Oregon’s “People, not Politicians” proposal, modeled closely off the California system adopted by voters in 2008, is intriguing for many reasons. The 12-person commission, selected through a neutral process, would include four Democrats, four Republicans and four others who are not registered with either of the two major parties – finally giving third-party and non-affiliated voters a guaranteed seat at the table. It explicitly prohibits elected officials and those who plan to seek election from the pool of potential commission candidates. And it emphasizes such objectives as heightening a district’s competitiveness and keeping communities that share geographic, social and economic interests together in guiding redrawing efforts.

We’ve already seen how the state’s two major political parties lock out non-affiliated or third-party voters. Earlier this year, the House passed a bill that would have imposed campaign finance limits on individuals and corporations – but would have protected the Democratic and Republican parties’ rights to give as much as they wanted to. Both parties allow only those who register as party members to vote in their primaries, typically ensuring that the most partisan candidates advance to the general election when the rest of Oregon voters can weigh in.

The redistricting proposal’s broad array of backers, including the League of Women Voters (of which Turrill is past president), the Independent Party of Oregon, the Oregon Progressive Party, Taxpayer Association of Oregon and Oregon Farm Bureau reflect a shared view across the spectrum that today’s system serves the two major parties – not the public.

There are still some unknowns. For example, because citizens on the committee would not be elected, voters can’t hold them accountable in the sense that they could elect someone else in their place. But voting from gerrymandered districts doesn’t provide a genuine opportunity to hold an official accountable anyway. And in recent years, many states across the country, including Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Washington, have concluded that commissions help bring a fairness to redistricting that legislative-driven processes simply cannot.

Initiative sponsors must first secure an approved ballot title from the Oregon Department of Justice before collecting nearly 150,000 signatures to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the ballot. That feat will be much more challenging now that the Legislature pushed through Senate Bill 761, a cynical and power-hoarding piece of legislation that eviscerated a key signature gathering method for voter initiatives. It’s one more way that parties – in this case, the Democratic majority – protect themselves at the cost of the public. Voters should hear the pitch for changing redistricting from these good-government advocates and prepare to push for changes that put the public first.

The post Editorial: A promising proposal to counter self-serving politics appeared first on People Not Politicians.

Groups Seek To Take Oregon Redistricting Out Of State Legislature’s Hands

admin — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 02:09:21 +0000

By Jeff Mapes | OPB
November 12, 2019

Oregon voters may be asked next year to take the redrawing of congressional and legislative boundaries out of the hands of elected politicians.

A coalition that includes a wide variety of political and government watchdog groups on Tuesday say they are filing three proposed initiatives that would create a nonpartisan citizens panel to handle redistricting for congressional and legislative seats in Oregon following the 2020 census.

Norman Turrill, an Oregon League of Women Voters official and a chief sponsor of the measures, said that legislators shouldn’t control a process that can play an important role in determining who wins elections.

“The Legislature has a conflict of interest in the process,” Turrill said, “and they would be tempted to bias the results to favor one party or another.”

In addition to the League of Women Voters, the coalition backing the bill includes Common Cause of Oregon, OSPIRG, the Independent Party of Oregon, the Oregon Progressive Party, the Oregon Farm Bureau and the Taxpayer Association of Oregon.

However, the coalition could run into opposition from groups aligned with the Democratic legislative majority, which now controls redistricting in Oregon.

One warning signal came from Our Oregon, a Portland-based group that coordinates political activity among labor unions, social justice groups, environmentalists and other left-of-center organizations.

Becca Uherbelau, Our Oregon’s executive director, said she was concerned that the proposed 12-member citizens commission would be less accountable to voters and not reflect the concerns of the most under-represented voters.

“Right now,” she said, “it looks like a cookie-cutter solution in search of a problem.”

The proposed measure follows the basic approach adopted by California voters in 2010. The Oregon proposal calls for the commission to be equally divided among registered Democrats, Republicans and those who don’t belong to either of those parties. A panel of three state administrative law judges would winnow down a list of applicants to include a pool of 150 people. Out of that pool, six commissioners would be randomly selected — and those six would in turn choose the remaining six from the judge-selected applicants.

The measure also would prohibit major elected officials and their aides, political party officials, major political donors and lobbyists from serving on the commission.

Turrill argued that this is a better approach than was adopted in the state of Washington, which created its redistricting commission in the 1980s. In Washington, the members of the commission are chosen by legislative leaders of both parties. Turrill called it a “bipartisan gerrymandering commission” that sets up a system of horse-trading between the Democratic and Republican parties.

“I think the people who oppose this [Oregon measure] are people who benefit from the current process,” he said.

That may be why many of the early backers of the measure come from the Republican side of the spectrum, which has steadily lost political power in Oregon.

In addition to Turrill, the other chief sponsor is Sharon Waterman, president of the Oregon Farm Bureau, which typically backs Republicans for major office.

Kevin Mannix, a former state Republican chairman and the party’s 2002 nominee for governor, authored his own initiative to create an independent redistricting commission. But his measure ran into criticism that its selection process gave disproportionate power to rural areas. He withdrew the measure last month and said Tuesday that he backs the new set of measures.

“It accomplishes the ultimate goal of having some independent-minded voters draw the legislative lines,” he said.

Turrill said the group is filing three different measures because of concerns about the requirement that each measure only deal with one subject. One measure filed Tuesday calls for this new commission to draw both congressional and legislative lines. But Turrill said the group will also file two separate measures Wednesday for congressional and legislative boundaries in case it runs into legal barriers trying to include both in the same initiative.

In any case, each initiative is a proposed constitutional amendment that requires 149,360 valid signatures from registered voters by next July to qualify for the November 2020 ballot.

If successful, any of the redistricting measures would take effect for the boundary changes following the 2020 census. That could be a particularly important redistricting cycle for Oregon since the state is expected to pick up a sixth congressional district. The state is now represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by four Democrats and one Republican.

The post Groups Seek To Take Oregon Redistricting Out Of State Legislature’s Hands appeared first on People Not Politicians.

Broad, diverse coalition files statewide initiative, launches campaign to reform Oregon’s redistricting process

admin — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 05:41:52 +0000

For Immediate Release
November 12, 2019

Contact
Norman Turrill: (503) 386-7996

People Not Politicians, a coalition of Oregon voters and organizations concerned about good government, today filed a statewide initiative to reform Oregon’s redistricting process.

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.

“Letting politicians manipulate voting maps is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Politicians in power shouldn’t be allowed to draw voting maps that benefit themselves, but that’s exactly what they do now. It’s a conflict of interest.” said Norman Turrill, Chair of People Not Politicians and President of the League of Women Voters of Oregon Advocacy Fund.

“We need to reform the process to create a fair system so that voters are choosing their politicians instead of politicians choosing their voters,” said Turrill.

Traditionally, state legislators draw district boundary maps every 10 years based on national census data. New district lines based on the 2020 census will be especially important because Oregon is projected to gain a sixth U.S. congressional seat due to population growth. 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 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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