The Double Majority Debate

A couple of Oregon's papers today devoted editorial space to supporting a proposed bill that would end the double majority requirement for approving property tax votes during most elections.  In essence, this would make it easier for voters to raise taxes.  That's a tough sell here in Oregon.

In its eleven paragraph effort, The Oregonian never once mentioned the bottom line purpose of the proposed bill.  That's either intellectual cowardice and/or another indicator that Portland's voters are suffering from tax exhaustion.  Evidence includes Multnomah County voting for Measure 28 but against Measure 30 (the proposed income tax increases) and barely keeping (52/48) its temporary income tax for school funding only 18 months after approving it 58/42.  Portland's school board is pretending it's the fear of the double majority requirement that is stopping them from trying to renew that tax...right.

The Salem Statesman Journal was more open in its discussion of the proposed double majority "holiday," but still struggled some in its effort to persuade.

It's time to revisit Oregon's strange custom whereby the nonvote of a dead person or a couch potato gets more weight than the conscious choice of someone who actually votes.

That's not how the double majority was sold to voters in the 1990s, of course, but that's how it often has worked out. It's not fair, and it ought to change.

Under the double majority, most property-tax requests can be approved only if at least 50 percent of eligible voters cast ballots and a majority vote yes. The exception comes in November of even-numbered years, when the majority rules, regardless of turnout.

Rep. Dave Hunt, D-Milwaukie, is co-sponsoring House Joint Resolution 14, a sensible attempt to relax the double-majority provision. It would extend double-majority holidays to all May and November elections -- that is, twice a year.

Assuming the measure passes both chambers and gets the governor's signature, it would go to voters for approval in May 2006.

No question that less voters participate in elections where there aren't major national and statewide issues on the plate.  The assumption is that these non-voters don't care about the results, and that's causing some tax proposals to fail--only because they can't satisfy the 50 percent voter requirement.  That's likely true in some cases.

But, if lack of voter turnout no longer guaranteed the defeat of such tax proposals, turnout might change, especially if the outcome was in doubt.  The yearning to staunch government growth that propelled Measure 47--the property tax cap and accompanying double majority provision--to approval in 1996 is still alive and well in Oregon. 

As I've noted many times, most Oregonians are not anti-tax, but anti-tax increase.  There's a huge difference...that too many tax advocates are unwilling to admit or unable to perceive.  Voters remain sick of the dishonest pretense that voting against a tax increase results in a tax cut, and are tired of being called stupid and/or uncaring when they vote against such increases.  And, they've learned to expect the state's larger newspapers to advocate for tax increases.

So, maybe we should view the reasoning in both editorials as a slight change in tax advocacy.  Now they're going after the lazy, the dead, etc. for causing the disapproval of tax increases. 

It still would be tough for a city, school district or other body to raise your taxes, as it should be. Persuading people to tax themselves is an uphill battle under any circumstance.

But the fight should be a fair one: One "yes" vote should count the same as one "no" vote. That's often not the case in Oregon.

Look at Salem's experience in 1998, when the city tried to pass measures for city operations and building fire stations. Both won the popular vote, but they were thrown out because turnout was 43 percent. Folks who ignored the election, or who had died or moved, wielded more influence than those who voted.

In some cases, measures would have won majority approval even if every remaining vote needed to reach 50 percent turnout had been a "no" vote. Something is wrong when encouraging people to skip voting becomes an accepted election strategy.

Promoting one person one vote certainly has some allure.  And the "when in doubt, vote no" tendency of the populace does increase the burden of justification on tax advocates.  But ultimately, what the tax advocates are complaining about is that they can't motivate enough voters to approve tax increases.

Currently even with the double majority requirement, the minimum number of registered voters it takes to approve a property tax increase is just over 25 percent--a majority of half the registered voters.  Is that burden really too heavy?

At one time, double-majority proponents may have had a legitimate gripe. Oregon had eight elections per year, and some folks suspected that officials timed tax measures for elections that weren't likely to draw much notice.

Now elections take place on just four dates, and every voter gets a ballot mailed to his or her home address several weeks in advance. Elections don't slip by unless people let them.

The November election in odd-numbered years -- currently the only haven from the double majority -- gets jammed with requests. It's hard to give each one the study it deserves.

Voters deserve a chance to relax the double majority. Legislators should pass HJR 14 and give it to them.

Oh, now it's a voter workload issue.  That brings back concerns with the "when in doubt, vote no" tendency...as well as voter frustrations that they're seeing so many proposed tax increases.  Maybe the increases will look more palatable if we see fewer of them at once.

Most of our tax advocates think that Oregon's resistance to tax increases is a marketing, not a product issue.  This proposal is a bit different...it would lower the bar regarding how many people the advocates have to sell to gain a tax increase.  We "deserve" the chance to relax the requirements--to make their job easier to increase our taxes.

What we deserve is honest, efficient government that we can trust to spend our money wisely.  Why are we discussing double majorities when we still don't have, for instance, a rainy day fund?  You can't market your way out of that one. 

Prioritize and compromise; get it done, and get it done right...soon.

Comments

[Alan DeWitt]

If I wanted to have my vote compete with dead people, I'd live in Chicago. :-) (Or maybe Florida is the proper target of mockery these days.)

The Double Majority was a bad stopgap fix to the problem in the first place. I'm not going to argue that there wasn't a problem to be solved, but that particular solution was pretty indiscriminate. I voted against it then, and I can only roll my eyes in frustration to see it taking up legislative energy again now. Wasn't it obvious that this would happen eventually?

You seem to imply that the double majority requirement is equivalent to a minimum 25% community suppport. That's misleading, becasue such a situation *also* requires nearly 25% community *opposition* to pass. It is possible to have 45% of registered voters in favor of a tax and 4% voting in opposition, and still have the measure fail.

As this scenario illustrates, the requirement actually encourages close, contentious measures that bring out large numbers of votes both for and against, because those issues are more likely to beat the turnout minimum. In contrast, something that generates tepid or moderate support but no substantial opposition is less likely to beat the turnout minimum.

Is this really what we want? Wouldn't it be better to encourage consensus instead of contention?

Your statement does give me an idea, though... replace the double-majority rule with a "minimum 25% of registered voters in favor" rule. It would accomplish nearly the same thing as double-majority rule, but allow measures to succeed when they are too dull to generate turnout.

Or maybe we should just make voting mandatory.

[RoguePundit]

I agree with you both on the bad stopgap thoughts and on your math.

I think that this law has made (or kept) vote scheduling an unnecessary issue. Some politicians deliberately wait on votes until there's an election coming where there should be good voter turnout. Others allow things to receive a vote to help defeat them, knowing that it's very unlikely that double majority will be satisfied. Etc. Such actions place parliamentary strategies ahead of straight-forward law-making, something I'm not sure we want to encourage.

That's a curious idea on the minimum number of yes voters necessary to approve a measure. It's not perfect either, but it might help motivate increased voting.

I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of "voters" in a typical Oregon election were dead, had moved, etc. I can't imagine it affects the outcome of many votes here, but Chicago or Florida may be a different story. :-)

[Jack Bog]

The double majority should be stricken on the ground that it disenfranchises those of us who actually vote no on these things sometimes. With the double majority rule, by showing up and voting no, you are often actually giving the proposal in question a better chance of passing than you would if you had not voted at all. It's not uncommon to hear the disgruntled sponsor of a failed measure complain, "If we could have gotten 10,000 more no votes, it would have passed."

That's a distortion of the voting process, and the law ought to be declared unconstitutional on that ground alone. To my knowledge, no one has challenged it on this point, however.

[RoguePundit]

Interesting thought on the constitutionality. I get the feeling a statewide vote on changing the double-majority would be close but fail...maybe then somebody would be motivated to go to court to challenge it.