Paul, I think the truth is somewhere in between your perspective and the Oregonian's. My experience was generally that in spite of the editorials, blog coverage, etc. that every person I ran into who had NOT been exposed to that, was leaning "no."

I don't think the concept is fundamentally confusing, but the ballot title did not provide a good foundation; I think Phil did a great job explaining it on a number of occasions, but unfortunately the engaged people you contact on an issue like this are a small minority.

Among people I talked to, when they got the connection that this measure would make it so their voting choices were not determined by party registration, they generally liked it; but I don't think that connection was made effectively without extensive discussion.

So I think the Oregonian's point, that a lack of public discourse was partially to blame, is very apt; it may be that the necessary level of public discourse was out of reach, but I do think it would be a mistake to assume that the preponderance of votes came from people who had carefully considered the measure, and made a well-informed decision.

At any rate, I look forward to further discussions on how best to reform our voting system, here or elsewhere.

"every person" above is an overstatement; I meant "most people."

Also, the M 65 supporters greatly outspent the opponents. If you include amount spent collecting the signatures, the supporters spent about 3 times more than the opponents. If you do not include the signatures, then they outspent the opponents by about 5-3.

The OEA mailing was to its own membership, not to the public. That does not excuse including the falsehood that Measure 65 was a Sizemore measure, but the mailing had a limited audience.

Eric Parker appears to admit that he could not understand M 65. Rest assured, Eric, that others did understand it.

Why did M 65 lose? Probably because of the ballot title, which conveyed little useful information to voters. The juxtaposition of M 64 and M 65 is an illustration of the effect of ballot titles on outcome. M 64 (union political deductions) was outspent probably 30 to one or more and truthfully had the onus of being a Sizemore measure. But it had a catchy ballot title and thus will come very close to winning (I think the late-counted vote in Multnomah County will defeat it).

The current ballot title appearance (15 word caption, etc.) was set up by the Republicans in the Legislature during their reign, with lots of advice from Sizemore. The current structure is poor, with a 15-word caption, 25-word yes statement and 25-word no statement. In nearly all cases, the result is repeating the same few words 3 times over. It would be far more informative to have a single, say 50- or 100-word, paragraph to describe the measure. In past sessions I have also written better ways to get judicial review of ballot titles, but virtually no one in the Legislature has expressed interest in it.

I am glad it failed. Now I look forward to working with the legislature on some election changes, such as same day voter registration and Fusion voting.

Paul - Most ballot measures succeed or fail because of he ballot title. Voters tend to be fairly low information about such measures, primarily because of the expenses associated with buying media. OEA and SEIU need to spend $4-$5 million every election cycle to defeat bad ballot measures, and in a year when the airwaves were saturated to the tune of $20 million or so for the Senate race, even that was not enough to decisively kill measure 64, which had a fantastic ballot title that explained next to nothing about what the measure actually does. Measure 65 had the opposite problem -- a terrible ballot title that explained next to nothing about what the measure actually does.

I had a feeling M65 was going down - almost every person I spoke to said they weren't sure how they felt about it so they ended up voting no.

Measure 65 stood on a fundamentally flawed premise: that those who do the work building a political party have no inherent right to choose their own candidates. No one I spoke to had any trouble seeing how unfair this is.

It's not complicated: those who do the work get the reward. So, if you want the reward, get to work.

Do we need electoral reform to make it easier to "get to work" and increase our political diversity? Yes. But it needs to happen in a way which rewards average people for being politically active, not tosses them aside.

To save others the hassle of navigating the Oregonian's byzantine web site, here's the direct link to the editorial in question.

Dan, following on Sal's comment -- I think your comparison of the money on the "yes" and "no" sides should be tempered with some information on how much was spent on the general election campaign. It was very low; I'm not sure what the norm for controversial measures, but off the top of my head, I believe the total spending on Measure 65 was far under $1 million, as compared to Measure 50 last year, which was over $15 million.

If most people are not being reached by either campaign, that increases the relative influence of the ballot title.

M65 failed because it was too confusing for the average person and raised more questions when other questions were answered.

That's my sense from the people I know who have commented to me on their votes on that measure--most of them not being wonkie enough to have had any exposure at all to the debate.

Pete, fair enough. I thought it was a spirited and mostly above board debate. I think editorializing four separate times, not counting Nielsen's individual op eds in the Sunday section, was a bit over the top.

I thought blaming the loss on misinformation and a partisan election was just wrong.

I hope we don't lose track of the rest of the legislative reforms. The state legislature still functions poorly.

<h2>The comment by George S. cries out for instant runoff voting, which was used in Pierce County (Tacoma) this week.</h2>