It isn’t as though there is any shortage of ruminations on the recent elections, or divination regarding what they hold for the future. Whether the family values base was simply too nauseated to leave home after the Ted Haggard revelations, whether the Donald Rumsfeld dismissal signals an Administrative admission that its Iraq policy is irretrievably doomed, whether Nancy Pelosi’s failed bid to install Jack Murtha as her lieutenant augurs an ineffectual leadership, or whether the Democrats’ gains amount to a decisive popular rejection of Washington’s culture of corruption, the pundit class has never had so much to chatter about.
So, chatter it does. It’s understandable that many people would find the effect to be deafening. These things are like waves: after a period of fascinating disruption in which the news was all that anyone could talk about, the talking heads are settling upon their talking points to spin and dissemble in an agreed-upon fashion; people will now, for the most part, turn their attention to other things. There remains at least one aspect of this recent circus that has been insufficiently remarked upon, however, and we ought to examine it before the wave swallows it up. It may seem unrelated to our national predicament at first, but I hope to establish its relevance. This is important.
Here in Oregon, we voted on two ballot initiatives pertaining to the financing of elections. Measure 47 passed; Measure 46 did not. Measure 46 was to establish the constitutionality of campaign finance reform in our state; Measure 47 could not be implemented without it. It’s written into the statute. Fourteen percent of all voting Oregonians chose to affirm a measure that they also chose to render unconstitutional. The only theory I’ve seen floated in the attempt to explain this phenomenon is that those were protest votes – the electorate decided to signal that it was fed up with monetary corruption in politics even as it declared it would be damned before tweaking the Oregon Constitution, which has only been amended in the past on approximately five million occasions. I have a different theory: We allowed ourselves to succumb, en masse, to a concerted misinformation campaign. I suggest that certain parties opposed to these measures were able to exploit our fears by introducing misreadings of the measures into public debate and that, once introduced, these misreadings compounded upon themselves when the subject was addressed by otherwise well-meaning Oregonians. The chatter got too loud for us to hear ourselves think and we failed to pierce the cloud of white noise.
Arguments in opposition to Measure 46 in the Oregon Voters’ Pamphlet included a statement signed by a consortium of Oregon artists and writers. “This measure would eliminate freedom of speech … and would undermine the free speech rights of all Oregonians,” the statement declared, in bold print. Other arguments stated that Oregonians have always swatted down such attempts to abrogate our speech, or that the sponsors of the measure hoped to “fool” Oregonians into signing away their rights. It’s important, in addressing these concerns, to consider the history of campaign finance reform and Oregon’s Constitution.
Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution states that “no law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever.” Notwithstanding this fact, Article 2, Section 22, of the Constitution stipulates that no more than 10 percent of any candidate’s total campaign funding may originate outside the candidate’s district. This campaign finance reform, written into the Oregon Constitution as an amendment, passed by public initiative in 1994. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down in 1998 on the grounds that the state has no right to limit out-of-district contributions. Measure 46 was proposed with the intention that our Constitution would stipulate, unequivocally, that Oregonians possess the constitutional right to determine the manner in which campaigns in our state are financed.
Please note the use of the word “notwithstanding” in the previous paragraph’s argument. The word is also included in the text of Article 1, Section 40 of our state constitution, enacted by public referendum by the people of Oregon in 1984: “Notwithstanding sections 15 and 16 of this Article, the penalty for aggravated murder as defined by law shall be death upon unanimous affirmative jury findings as provided by law.” The text of the constitutional article that reinstates the death penalty specifically entails that it is not a refutation of Articles 15 and 16, which stipulate the guiding principles of the foundations for criminal law and the treatment of prisoners, respectively. It addresses pre-existing constitutional stipulations and affirms that it does not contradict them; it simply clarifies their purview.
The text of Measure 46 stipulates that “notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution, the people … may enact and amend laws to prohibit or limit contributions … to influence the outcome of any election.” It does not contradict Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution; it amplifies it. It enables the people of Oregon to determine the manner in which their elections may be financed. We have thrown it away. We must pay attention. This is important.
Pay attention
Daily Emerald
November 16, 2006
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