Month: December 2013

What I can point to is a point when political parties in Washington
tried to force greater political allegiance and were bucked by the
voters. About 15 years ago the Republican and Democratic parties sued
and were able to get Washington’s old open primary law tossed by the
courts. In the old version, Washington voters did not register by party
and were able to vote for any candidate in a primary. The top vote
getter from each party would advance.

After the courts
threw out that version (because the parties said that by not controlling
who voted in their primaries violated their rights to association) the
state instituted a more closed primary. Each voter would get a series
ballots with only a certain party’s candidates on each. You’d turn in
one ballot, forcing you to participate in only one primary.

This was similar to Oregon’s current primary law in which parties have the ability to open their primaries to non-registered voters.

The
Washington voters quickly rejected the more closed primary system,
opting instead for a Top Two primary, which actually just works as a
qualifying election. Instead of the original primary system that sought
to break down the walls that guarded parties by opening up their
nomination processes to the general public, the Top Two makes that
meaningless. The Top Two passes along the top vote getters, even if both
say they’re Democrats or Republicans.

A similar
election system was rejected by more than a 10 percent margin in Oregon,
giving argument to the point that maybe Oregon and Washington aren’t
that alike in political cultures. But, an analysis after Measure 65 went down in flames said the loss had more to do with the explanation of the measure than anything else.

That
Oregon voters were used to their current system and Washington voters
had a new system foisted on them by the courts and the parties was
probably the best way to explain the difference in the two initiative
results.

The most important thing to think about in
terms of the possibility of a Top Two system in Oregon is that the idea
itself in 2008 came from the political center of the state political
culture. Rather than some quixotic political dreamer, Measure 65 was
proposed by two former Oregon secretaries of state and supported by a
popular former (and now again current) governor. And, now its coming back again.

So, the idea of voting systems that ignore the institutional power of parties likely have some home in the Cascadian
political culture. Rather than a large group or band centered politics,
like religion, politics are grown from much smaller groups and from the
person themselves. It is important to participate, the civic good is
worth promoting. But, no large organization or institution is going to
tell the average Cascadian voter what to do.

I’m not sure what I expected to find when I was looking for some data on party affiliation broken down by state. I thought it would mirror religious affiliation. Strong groups of affiliated folks along the edges, but also a broad center of non-affiliated folks who didn’t feel like they belonged to any particular party.

In a way, I did find that. Both Washington and Oregon have strong numbers (usually a majority) of non-Democratic or Republican voters.

The surprising thing for me was that New England was even independent. New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine (for example) each have strong independent numbers above both Democrats and Republicans. Outside a few other states, this pattern is pretty unique to Cascadia and New England.

So, what I set out to see was that if Cascadia’s anti-institutional and independent streak in religion extended to politics. And, maybe that’s true. There might also be a connection between religion and politics in New England. If you look at the maps here, you see large swaths of high variety and low allegiance in regions across New England as well.

I think there’s something to the way we vote in primaries around here, the actual machinations of voting, but that’s for the next post.

From Cascadia PDX:

“The corporate state is not science fiction. Corporate agribusiness is
taking over what, how, and who grows food in my community. It has become
obvious that the government isn’t going to lift a finger to stop them.
It’s clear that the people, in the places where we live, must break the
chokehold of a system of law favoring corporations to one that
recognizes community rights.”

Dana Allen of Corvallis, Oregon

Dana is not expressing an unpopular sentiment around certain parts of Cascadia. Even outside what most would consider liberal urban enclaves, most people would express at least latent mistrust of big companies.

But, like a lot of things that make up modern Cascadia, this isn’t a new thing. Early settlers to Oregon and Washington brought with them a mistrust of the new corporate model. In the creation of both major American Cascadian states, delegates from Appalachia clashed with more corporate friendly New Englanders in how corporations should be handled.

In Oregon in the 1850s:

Many of the delegates entered the convention with a strong mistrust of
corporations. They had seen abuses in the Midwest and elsewhere in which
unscrupulous corporate operators had left innocent stockholders deep in
debt and workers unpaid. Other delegates saw no way for Oregon to move
forward without easy access to “the genius of our age to incorporate.”
Some of the debate would revolve around stereotypes of corporations as
large and uncaring machines of the economy that routinely chewed up
farmers and workers.

Eventually, they landed on  a sort of homegrown middle ground for corporations:

They looked to the benefits provided by corporations that would enhance
rather than threaten the rural character of the agrarian ideal. An
example could be viewed only a short walk from the convention where the
final work was being completed on the Willamette Woolen Mills the
territory’s first large factory. This corporate endeavor was home-grown
in origin, scope, and benefit. This was proof that, within the proper
framework and regulation, corporations could benefit Oregon and free it
from the need to import expensive products from far-off factories.
Otherwise, Williams warned, “We must pay tribute to Massachusetts and
New England all our lives, unless we can devise some way here for the
erection of manufacturing establishments in this state.”

When Washington got around to drafting a constitution in 1878, a lot of these same discussions went into crafting the document. Washington Territory didn’t end up getting statehood in the 1870s (an 1889 constitution was eventually approved by Congress). What was theoretical in Oregon in the 1850s was a practical discussion in Washington during their drafting.

Some of the provisions adopted by the Walla Walla Convention reflected distrust of corporations and railroad. All charter and special privileges that had not been fulfilled in good faith were to be invalidated at the time of the adoption of this constitutions. This provision was apparently directed against the Northern Pacific Railroad whose land policy was unpopular in Washington Territory because it made no real effort to build a line in accordance with its Washington charter until after 1880.

Other provisions including making stockholders individually liable for actions of their company and outlawing banks.