Political misinformation

Mis-information isn't harmless.

     "Peter, you said that the outright lies made by the opponents of the charter changes were so preposterous as to be "harmless." No. Misinformation matters. People remember the lie, and pass it on. You should correct lies immediately."
        Comment I received yesterday

Yesterday I cited the political advertisement asserting that proposed changes to the Jackson County charter would "import Portland" and be a "total transformation" of Jackson County. 

I used the assertion by charter change opponents as a way to illustrate the current reputation of Portland. I didn't take it seriously as a reflection on the ballot issues. It was an example of cynical political arguments pulled out of the air. I thought their argument laughably ridiculous. No one would take it seriously. 

I wrote that if charter-update opponents thought it more effective to accuse the initiative proponents of seeking communism or socialism or pedophilia, they might have chosen that. Anything to scare people. Instead, they said it would make us like Portland. The horror!

My critics are right, though. Errors matter. 

The Rogue Valley Times newspaper published a letter by a charter change opponent who was either careless or dishonest. He asserted that the 200 people who gathered signatures were paid. The idea was to diminish the initiatives' credibility as a grass-roots public concern. But the signature gatherers were not paid. All were self-motivated volunteers. The newspaper immediately ran a retraction. Good for them. 

Did you hear???  Perk of a commissioner's job -- a new one every year, and theirs to keep.

Vivid, mentally sticky ideas and images are more likely to be passed around than boring truths. Lies make good stories. Suppose I were to write that each Jackson County commissioner received as an untaxed perk a new Dodge Ram 3500 Limited Crew Cab, valued at about $85,000, for the purpose of driving around the county. Moreover, they each got to sell the car back to the Lithia dealer at the end of each year, and keep the proceeds as extra secret compensation. It would be untrue. But the story is vivid and specific enough to have social media "legs." It might get spread around, with some people saying it was true; others saying it was untrue. Some people might clarify saying it is a Ford 150 Lightning EV, not a Dodge Ram, and some people might say the commissioners hate getting the EV Lightning; they prefer the Ram, especially Colleen Roberts. But David Dotterer, who lives in Ashland, prefers the EV. Who knows what is true? There's all that talk and rumor. If there is smoke there must be fire. The whole idea and controversy might motivate some people to vote in favor of the ballot measures. They get free trucks? Yeah, I heard something about that. Stop the steal! Vote yes.

Again, I just made that up. They don't get free trucks. But it's a good story.

I think the ballot changes will improve county government in some small but meaningful ways. Whatever else, they won't transform this county into Portland.

Kevin Stine is a Medford city council member, first elected in 2014. He is a Navy reservist, a teacher, and a husband and father. He studied political science at Southern Oregon University. He was one of several people who said I should correct the record on the charter change. Medford has eight city council members and a mayor. All are unpaid.

Guest Post by Kevin Stine

Elections are similar to TV advertisements. An ad for a restaurant will show an attractive person eating a cheeseburger and describe to you how good the burger tastes. They are not going to tell you that the cheeseburger is 1,200 calories. In a similar way, a political campaign is going to tell you the good stuff they are promoting and hope you don’t find out the missing information.

I hadn’t heard about the “Stop Bigger Government PAC” until Peter wrote about it yesterday. The premise they make is that everything with the County is great, and no changes should happen, because if they do, then it will be chaos. They are presenting the County like a restaurant would present a cheeseburger. They are opposed to any Jackson County charter changes, but reading their website I see loads of misleading or outright false information.

Peter wrote yesterday about the PAC’s misrepresentation comparing the potential changes that would make Jackson County “exactly the same” as Multnomah County. I’ll add that the elected chair of the Multnomah County commission operates as the CEO of the county, which is far different than how Jackson County operates, with their county administrator.

                     

Add two commissioners, going from three to five

Ballot Measure 15-224: The argument against, is that the Commissioners would somehow have the ability to violate the State public meeting laws. I am unsure how they came to that conclusion. Moving from three positions to five positions does not allow them to violate State law.   

                                  

Nonpartisan primary elections

Ballot Measure 15-225: Two claims are made here, and I’ll address both.

First off, they write that the November election would be essentially eliminated. Not true. This is not an automatic part of how the system would run, and it would actually be rare. A candidate would need 50%+ in a May election to be the winner. In the likely event the top vote getter receives less than 50%, then the top two would be on the ballot in November.

I looked at Josephine County, because they are the next-door county, and they have nonpartisan commissioners. Of the 15 elections for county commissioners over the past 20 years, exactly one of those elections resulted in a candidate getting the 50%+ which avoids the general election. That was Herman Baertschiger in 2020. The other 14 all went to a November election. The history is that 93% of the time the Josephine Commissioner election gets decided in November.

Secondly, the voter turnout numbers the PAC presented of 18% and 80% are way off. The PAC gives false numbers that there are four times as many votes cast in May than in November. Commissioners are elected in even number years, so I’ll look up the last 4 election cycles.

2016 Primary – 53.6% -- 2016 General – 77.4%

2018 Primary – 34.2% -- 2018 General – 67.5%

2020 Primary – 47.5% -- 2020 General – 79.5%

2022 Primary – 32.7% -- 2022 General – 66%

Primary Average 42% -- General Average 72.6%

There’s also no reasoning given why we need party labels for that office, or why we should deny the large number of nonpartisan or Independent Party voters the ability to vote, or potentially be candidates themselves, in May.  That is mostly because there isn’t a good reason. 

              

Reduce salary to county average

Ballot Measure 15-226: The argument is hardly a prevailing argument at all. If someone believes $75,000 is not a large enough salary to be a county commissioner, then I don’t want that person to be a county commissioner anyway. As far as the cost of a new commissioner, I suggest putting a partition in two of the offices. For the meeting room where they vote, I suggest a table with two chairs and a microphone. These two ideas would save hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to the estimates.

Just a nugget of information, during her initial campaign in 2014, Jackson County Commissioner Colleen Roberts made a pledge to only accept around $70,000, instead of the close-to-$100,000 she could have received. She even said this in 2016, “When your elected officials make three or four times the average salary of the working person supporting it, it kind of takes away some of the feel of being the elected representative.”  KOBI-5

That was then, this is now. She no longer supports lowering salaries and takes the maximum she can get.

The campaign by opponents of the ballot measures will roll on, and apparently they will be well-funded. As we see, they aren't telling us the whole story or the true one. They are hoping the good people of Jackson County eat it up anyway.

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