Legislation by sound bite an affront to all

Published 9:00 pm Monday, November 26, 2001

I like lower taxes as well as anybody, but I wish Tim Eyman would find honest work.

The founders of this country gave us a representative form of government because public policy is too complicated to conduct through soundbites. Eyman’s issues ought to be solved by the Legislature. That’s what it’s there for. If voters don’t like the laws legislators pass, they should elect new legislators.

Soundbite initiatives are an insult to our Constitutional system. Let me give you an example why that is true. In 1994, 50.1 percent of Oregon voters legalized physician assisted suicide. I was involved in polling a few weeks later to find out why that happened. Legalization did not occur because physician assisted suicide was more popular in Oregon than in Washington or California, where voters defeated similar Initiatives in 1991 and 1992. Initial support in Oregon was actually 15 percent weaker. The reason the measure passed by a few hundred votes out of a million cast was because the ‘No” campaign was utterly incompetent, and Oregon voters had no idea there were practical reasons to vote no.

The pollster found that when Oregon voters heard those practical reasons, support dropped to 13 percent. He’d never seen support fade so fast. But Oregon voters never heard those reasons, so the initiative passed. So much for the wisdom of soundbite initiatives. The elderly and under-insured of Oregon can now be killed by doctors who don’t know how to treat their pain and depression, all because the “No” campaign failed to communicate its message.

No doubt Eyman’s recent triumph will produce similar, but lesser, tragedies.

Everett