Vote early. Not often.

"Election time approaches, and I am curious if you have a comment on Measure 98," began the email.  It was from a person who is not really a stranger--only because he has emailed me once before, and it was in response to my op-ed in the Statesman Journal.  But a stranger as in I don't know the sender.

I was shocked.  Stunned. Somebody asking me for my thoughts on a statewide ballot measure?  My views matter to somebody?

I mean, I have enough and more feedback as evidence that my op-eds have reached people, even when they disagree with me.  So, yes, my opinion has mattered to them.  But, "your opinion is a direct influence on my decision of how to vote."  This is an entirely different ballgame altogether, on how I would vote on a measure and what my thoughts are.

It is understandable.  Our ballots have gotten to be way too long, and the ballot information book is now as fat and boring as a college textbook typically is.  It is even worse in some states like Colorado and California.  Of course, one can simply avoid voting, or casually vote a yes/no without giving the choices a great deal of thought.  But, if one wants to carefully weigh the choices, it is a lot of work, and a lot of hard work at that.  The only good thing is that here in Oregon we can vote from home.  Which is what I did Sunday evening, with the voter information book and the internet as my resources for the open-book exam.

I am not the only one worried that we might be asking way too much from us.  A political science professor at the University of Denver writes:

Look, I’m a passionate advocate for free and fair elections and for public participation in them. But this is too much. As a political scientist who specializes in American elections, I’ve just got to be toward the upper end of the informed scale, and there’s no way I’m going to cast an informed vote on all these contests.

Exactly.  If relatively informed people like him and me have a tough time doing the homework and then marking our preferences, ...

Measure 98--the one that the email referred to--is one of the few measures on the ballot here in Oregon.  These are complex policy ideas.  At least not as complex as the carbon-tax ballot measure in Washington, which I had blogged about a few days ago.

The Denver professor asks a question that is familiar to me.  "But is the ballot really the right place to hammer these things out?"  In an op-ed a few years ago, I argued that asking voters to say yes/no to complex ideas is horribly wrong.  If it were as simple as that, then we don't need a legislative body.  We have a legislature--a bicameral one at that--because such complex issues need to be discussed and argued at length by all of us, via our elected representatives.  But, hey, whoever listens to me, right?

Democracy is terribly messy.  Painful.  But, there is no better alternative.  For now, I am relieved and happy that I don't have to deal with a ballot for some time ;)

Ballot measures prove a tough test

Voting in this election, which I did just a couple of hours after the ballot arrived in my mailbox, confirmed a view that I have held for a long time: If I ever tested my students in ways that messed them up as thoroughly as the ballot messes me up, no sane student would ever register for my classes again.

Like a diligent student, I try to follow national and local political issues as closely as possible so that I can provide the best possible answers at the civics test — the election.

Choosing a candidate for an office is easy. It is like the true-false questions in a test. But choosing an idea, which is what the statewide measures are, turns out to be a disaster for me, because ideas warrant discussions before a simple up or down vote.

It is through discussions that we further understand the issue and, more importantly, the complications that might be buried deep down. This is why when I test students on concepts, I don’t use true-false or multiple-­choice questions. Instead, I force them to explore the fuzzy, gray areas through short essay responses.

Through reasoning and persuasion, and with evidence, students finally arrive at convincing answers, even if they don’t necessarily agree with my conclusions. At least, that is my hope.

Politics is overwhelmingly about the fuzzy, gray areas. For instance, according to the big fat voter’s pamphlet, Measure 61 “creates mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain theft, identity theft, forgery, drug and burglary crimes.” What a juicy piece for discussions! Even on the surface, the measure comes across as one with multiple effects, and with unintended consequences that we will come to know about only years later.

However, instead of having discussions, I am simply being asked to note whether I am for it or against it. Isn’t such a “yes” or “no” the most atrociously inappropriate way for society to decide on most of such ballot measures?

On the other hand, these are the kinds of questions I would love to have on an essay test — or better yet, for classroom discussions. Oh, yes, we do have a forum for classroom discussions in the political context: the Legislature! Not one, but two chambers of the Legislature — the Senate and the House.

Well unfortunately, there was no option to write a 700-word essay as my response to Measure 61. Maybe an opinion piece, if the editor publishes it, but that does not count as a vote anyway.

To complicate matters, the ballot warned me that voting a certain way on Measure 57 could nullify my vote on Measure 61. Shucks! Back to reading the pamphlet all over again. It was certainly one of those rare occasions when I wished I weren’t a teetotaler — a few drinks might have helped ease my frustrations.

Finally, I metaphorically held my nose and voted.

I imagined giving my students an exam with a few questions and warning them there that there would be a penalty if their answers to one question did not match up with their answers to another question. If I did that, I am sure that soon, my peers and the public would seriously question my sanity — which, come to think of it, some do even now!

I simply cannot understand how we have ended up with a political process where we have two measures about the same set of issues, and where a vote on one can negate the vote on the other. Perhaps that is proof enough that neither measure should have been on the ballot in the first place.

I am all in favor of initiative legislation, and want as much citizen participation as possible in our collective decision-making. I am immensely thankful that these citizen-empowering tools are enshrined in the constitutions both in Oregon and California, where I lived before relocating to Eugene.

But if the 2008 ballot is an indicator of how ugly the future tests might be for us civics students, well, I think it is time we overhauled the curriculum. At least to prevent the abuse of initiative legislation, if not for anything else, maybe we ought to revise our state Constitution as a part of Oregon’s sesquicentennial celebrations — before disgruntled voters abandon voting itself.

Published in the Register Guard, October 27, 2008