Light initiative ballot likely

RegisterGuard.com: Oregon voters may soon decide on longer prison terms for sex offenders, dispensaries for medical marijuana and whether lottery profits should go permanently to parks, wildlife and clean water programs. With the signature deadline a week away for those petitioning to put initiatives on the November ballot, three other proposals are less certain possibilities. Two would authorize a casino east of Portland and the third would shift the once-per-decade task of redrawing legislative and congressional boundaries from the Legislature to an independent commission. And, because of the three legislative referrals that already have qualified for the ballot, voters will be asked to weigh in on whether the Legislature should meet annually, on expanding home loans to veterans and on changing constitutional standards for state borrowing. As for the numerous other high-profile ballot questions that Oregon voters have gotten used to wading through, they’re just not happening. With a July 2 deadline looming for initiative petitioners to submit their signatures, it’s looking as if Oregon will have as few as six or as many as nine measures on the ballot. On the high end, that would put this fall’s total ballot measure count on par with the eight in 2004 and nine in 1992, but well below the modern-day record-number of 26 in 2000. And if it ends up that just three initiatives join the three legislative referrals, then Oregon voters will face the lightest load of ballot measures since 1982. Experts point to a number of factors that may explain the fall-off, which has been under way since the 2000 high point. One is legislation of recent years that led to new rules, including a ban on signature gathering by people with criminal backgrounds and the requirement that petition signers must fill in their personal information, rather than defer that task to circulators.

To read more, click here.

Comments

There are no comments for this entry.

More News