Vote!
Ready to send in your ballot, but not sure about all the measures? A group of us put together the ballot endorsements below just in case you wanted suggestions in filling out your ballot. After studying the issues, here’s our 2 cents worth:
People
YES for Jeff Merkley, Earl Blumenauer, and John Kitzhaber. For local Oregon races, we generally recommend OLCV’s candidate endorsements.
Candidates
Measure 86 – Post-secondary education fund – YES
Measure 87 – Employment of state judges – YES
Measure 88 – Driver cards – YES!!!
Let’s join California and Washington to create a route for everyone on the roads to take a driving test and access car insurance.
Measure 89 – Can’t abridge rights based on sex – YES
Measure 90 – Change general election nomination process – NO!!!
This is a tricky but important one. Per election scholar Josh Berezin, “It solves none of the problems it aims to solve. This is a basically a play for business interests to get business Democrats and corporate Republicans elected. This NW Labor Press article about the measure from a union perspective explains it very well. Other states with this system — Louisiana, California, Washington — have seen the costs of “primary” elections go up (a candidate has to communicate with the entire electorate, not just the candidate’s party members), with no increase in voter participation among independents. It has also led to the dreaded situation in which, say, a strongly Democratic district ends up with two Republicans in the general election! Happened in California in 2012. Imagine 4 Democrats and 2 Republicans running in the same primary where the top 2 emerge. Four Democrats split the Democratic vote into smaller pieces than the two Republicans; the two Republicans “win” the primary. Pretty crazy.”
Measure 91 – Legalize marijuana – YES
It’s about time, Oregon! Campaign website.
Measure 92 – Label GMOs – YES!
Here comes the money flood. This was beaten back in WA and CA. This is about your right to know what you put in your mouth and who you support with your pocketbook, not whether GMOs should or should not be part of our food system. Let’s win it in Oregon. Here’s the campaign website.
Local government
Portland – parks bond – YES!
Metro – Extends amendment that prohibits Metro-mandated density increases in single family neighborhoods – TOSS UP
This amendment was originally introduced and passed back in 2002 as an alternative to a draconian measure from anti-planning group Oregonians in Action to strip Metro of its planning authority (which failed). The measure that passed had a 12 year sunset clause and a requirement that Metro put it back on the ballot before then, so here we go again. Metro can’t dictate density increases anyway; that level of detail is up to individual cities and counties. So a YES vote keeps Metro from doing things it can’t do anyway. And a NO vote lets this silly amendment sail off happily into the sunset. Either vote sounds fine to us.
Portland – public school levy renewal – YES
Cheers,
– Eli Spevak, Noelle Studer-Spevak, Jim Labbe, Josh Berezin, Lee Dayfield, Linda Robinson, Albert Kaufman, Ted Labbe, Kelly Rogers
