Minor Parties’ Major Roadblock

[June 10th, 2009]

Democratic legislative leaders have consigned two highly popular electoral reform bills to oblivion in the final days of the 2009 session.

The bills’ dormancy reveals two things: how ruthlessly D’s will protect their hard-won turf from minor parties and how keen the Oregon Education Association is to maintain the current system.

House Bill 2414 would allow general-election ballots to show candidates carrying the nomination of up to three parties, so that, say, a Democrat could also be endorsed by the Pacific Green Party or a Republican by the Libertarian Party.

Despite sailing through the House 53-7 on March 31, the so-called “fusion voting” measure is stuck in the Senate Rules Committee. There, committee chairman Sen. Richard Devlin (D-Tualatin) has declined to move the bill, although a bipartisan letter from 16 of Oregon’s 30 senators asked him to send the bill to the Senate floor for a vote.

The OEA says Devlin’s doing the right thing. “Our members are on record as opposing fusion voting,” says OEA spokeswoman Becca Uherbelau. “We think it would confuse voters and lead to slogan campaigns.”

Similarly, Senate Bill 326, which passed the Senate unanimously May 13, is stuck in the House Rules Committee. That bill would reverse 2005 legislation that has made it much harder for minor-party candidates to qualify for the ballot. That 2005 legislation prohibits any voter who votes in a major-party primary from signing a petition to qualify an independent candidate for the ballot.

Leaders of smaller parties say more than a half-million voters are disenfranchised by the current system because they can’t vote in Democratic and Republican primaries.

“About a quarter of Oregon voters are not registered with either major party,” notes Independent Party chairwoman Linda Williams, a Portland lawyer. “I think the public is interested in a greater opportunity for participation.”

And third-party members also say the current system could be strengthened by fusion voting (see “All That Fusion Jazz,” WW, June 6, 2007). That’s because major-party candidates would need to broaden their positions to include issues of interest to third parties. And ballots in fusion-voting states, such as New York, give voters more information about a candidate, says Barbara Dudley, chairwoman of the Oregon Working Families Party.

Spokespeople for Devlin, the Senate majority leader, and House Majority Leader Mary Nolan (D-Portland) say the two bills are simply lower priorities than addressing weightier issues and a gaping budget hole.

“We’re working on health care,” says Nolan spokesman Michael Cox. “I just don’t think [SB 326] is going anywhere.”

Sen. Rick Metsger (D-Welches), who sponsored SB 326, scoffs at that explanation.

“Baloney,” says Metsger, who lost in a three-way Democratic primary last year for Oregon secretary of state after the OEA and other unions endorsed eventual winner Kate Brown. “It takes one minute to open a work session and pass a bill to the floor. We’re still somehow finding time to pass bills on things like olive oil.” (The Senate on June 4 passed HB 2893, relating to olive oil labeling.)

Dudley says the fate of reform legislation shows Oregon Democrats aren’t interested in altering a system in which Democrat Ted Kulongoski has benefited in the past two governor’s races from Libertarian and Constitution Party candidates pulling significant percentages from the Republican nominee.

“The Democrats don’t want competition,” Dudley says. “And I think they also like having the Libertarian and Constitution Party act as spoilers.”

Although neither the Democratic Party of Oregon nor the OEA has testified publicly against either bill, the fingerprints of the party and the teachers union show up in more subtle ways.

On May 21, Trent Lutz, director of the Democratic Party of Oregon, wrote an email to Devlin saying, “While the Democratic Party of Oregon believes that we should always strive to increase participation in voting, no matter what your political affiliation might be, we believe HB 2414 could do more harm than good.”

Then, on May 29, 16 senators urged Devlin to bring HB 2414 up for a vote. “We see this as an important clarification of Oregon law that will bring more of Oregon’s 100,000 minor party members into the mainstream political process,” the senators wrote. “Please send this bill to the floor.”

Instead, Devlin has entertained a number of crippling amendments from lobbyists working with OEA, which, along with its affiliated groups, poured more than $10 million into Democratic coffers during the 2008 election cycle.

Uherbelau insists the issue is “not a high priority” for OEA, which wants lawmakers to focus on bigger issues.

The Independent Party’s Williams says that’s unfortunate. “We think voters would be served by a return to a more vibrant and robust tradition of minor parties and independent candidates.”