Illogical

The Oregonian offers more editorial nonsense today, opining that an obviously-flawed Public Campaign Financing system should have been put to a vote of the people in Portland – and also that the first revision of it should be referred before being implemented.

Sigh…. where to start?

“The commission studying ways to improve the system has tentatively recommended an important tweak — requiring the signees to be registered voters. That would make it much more difficult for candidates to collect signatures, but also much more difficult to fake them. This change, of course, is needed.”

Yes, it is. But requiring donors (of $5 to help a candidate qualify for public financing) to be registered voters wouldn’t make it much more difficult to collect valid signatures, in my experience. It would make it more difficult for candidates wanting to cheat, but not for those running honorably. The proposed change that will make donation collection more difficult is requiring each donor and solicitor to sign a triplicate form, which precludes people downloading the form off the Internet and sending it in. I received fewer than 100 of my donations that way, but still, it’s an added burden. It will also make it more difficult to collect the way Erik Sten did, by sending out letters asking people to return the form with a donation. Those factors raise the bar, even for candidates who aren’t out to game the system. Let’s recognize that, while accepting the change to using verifiable signatures is necessary and desirable.

“But something even more fundamental is needed first. We mentioned the question: Where in the world does this commission start? Actually, that’s not such a difficult question. This commission should start by recommending that the Portland City Council put the system to a vote of Portlanders. Trust voters to decide its fate. This is the vote that should have happened before the council ever launched the program.”

That’s only true if the desired answer is NO. We’re seeing right now, with the Charter reform ballot measures, that putting an issue on the ballot when every line and word hasn’t been properly scrutinized, leads to reasons to vote NO that have little connection to the underlying philosophical questions. If the question on the May ballot were, “Do you want to change Portland’s form of government?”, the vote would be different from the question we are being forced to answer, “Do you want to change to the form of government mandated in these Charter changes?” Many advocates of a Strong Mayor-Chief Administrative Officer model don’t support THIS proposal. It’s really a shame the proponents of changing the system didn’t respect public process enough to allow citizens to comment and refine their proposal, before sending it to the ballot. It’s sad even for people like me who believe tweaking the current Commission practices is all that’s needed. When this proposal goes down in flames, people who want wholesale changes will be able to say truthfully that the voters didn’t like THIS proposal, and they’ll keep working to put yet another refinement of government reorganization on the ballot.

Similarly, if the first iteration of the Public Campaign Finance system had been on the ballot last May, only those wanting to cheat would have voted Yes. How can the O‘s editorial board recommend sending the next version to the ballot, now? They don’t even know what the final recommendations of the Citizens Campiagn Commission will be, or what changes Council will make in response to public testimony on it. Without at least one more cycle, there’s no way of knowing whether this grand experiment in democracy is ready to send to voters, or not.

If the referral system is going to be useful at all in the 21st century, the measures given to voters for their YES or NO decision must be thoughtful, carefully-processed packages formulated with broad public input, that allow real choices, not Strawman vs. Status Quo. A good Strong Mayor proposal, not 26-91. A Public Campaign Finance system with safeguards for public money and fair opportunities for candidates to succeed – which may be the version Council will approve later this year, or it may take further revisions using results from the 2008 election experience.

Powerful people who have already made up their minds on an issue, advocating for sending flawed measures to the ballot, are not serving the long term public good.