Politics


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		Oregon Pacific Party co-founder Blair Bobier (right) says one reason people feel left out of politics is that their election-day choices are limited to Democrats and Republicans. PHOTO: MICHAEL PARRISH

	Various forms of proportional representation are used to elect city councils in Cambridge, Mass., Peoria, Ill., and Alamagordo, N.M. Countries using proportional representation include Germany, Belgium, Spain, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland and Greece. Democrats, with 780,000 registered voters, are the largest party in Oregon. Republicans follow with 692,000. All other parties combined account for 42,000 people. The fastest-growing segment of the Oregon electorate is independent or "unaffiliated," which has doubled to nearly 400,000 in the last six years.


	Life of the Parties


	Last year Oregonians cast more than half a million votes for minor-party candidates, yet only Democrats and Republicans took office. A proposed ballot measure could change that.

BY DAVID SMIGELSKI, dsmigelski@wweek.com

The Socialists are coming! The Socialists are coming!

So are the Libertarians, the Greens and a smattering of other minor political parties that feel shut out of Oregon's electoral system, which is dominated by Republicans and Democrats.

Oregon has always been seen as fairly hospitable when it comes to minor parties. Getting third-party candidates on the ballot is easy here compared to many states. Last fall, for example, 10 parties--ranging from the free-market Libertarians to the green-leaning Pacific Party--ran candidates for offices including secretary of state, attorney general, state treasurer, state Legislature and U.S. Congress. All combined, minor-party candidates drew nearly 550,000 votes. Yet the only people who took office were Republicans and Democrats.

"Oregonians are guaranteed the right to vote, but they don't have the right to be represented," says Blair Bobier, coordinator of a group called Oregonians for Fair and Equal Representation. OFFER, led by a coalition of independent political parties--including the Pacific Party, Libertarians and Socialists--is pushing for a system called proportional representation, which proponents say would loosen the stifling grip of America's two-party system.

Once it gets the go-ahead from state elections officials, expected later this month, OFFER is prepared to gather the 98,000 signatures needed to put the debate before Oregon voters in November 1998. The measure, while holding some real appeal for disenchanted voters, faces an uphill political battle. Few expect it to become law, yet in an era of campaign abuses and factionalism within the two major parties, a debate over the two-party, winner-take-all system is a timely one.

Secretary of State Phil Keisling, while stressing that he has not taken a position on OFFER's proposal, calls the idea "the biggest change in the structure of our government that we've been asked to ponder in the last 50 years."

Under proportional representation--a system used by most other democracies in the world--political parties gain seats in direct proportion to the percentage of votes they receive. OFFER is proposing that such a system be used to elect the state House of Representatives.

At present, each of the state's 60 House members represents one geographical district. The candidate who garners the most votes in the general election wins the seat for that district. Under OFFER's proposal, House districts would be eliminated and candidates would run on a statewide party slate. Parties would receive House seats equal to the percentage of votes they receive.

For instance, if the Republican Party got 40 percent of the votes, it would get 24 seats--or 40 percent of 60. If the Democratic slate received 37 percent of the votes, Democrats would get 22 seats. If Libertarians managed 7 percent of the votes, they'd get three seats, and so on.

Each party would choose the people to fill the seats from a party list. A party would rank its candidates in order of preference at a party convention. If a party won 10 seats, the first 10 people on the list would get seats.

Proponents of proportional representation note that while more than 400,000 registered voters in Oregon aren't affiliated with either of America's two major parties, every state legislator is either a Republican or Democrat.

"People know intuitively that something is wrong with the system, but they may not know it's the winner-take-all system," Bobier says.

Bobier, a founding member of the Pacific Party, sees the growing number of independent voters--which has more than doubled in the last six years--as evidence that people are hungry for ideas from outside the two-party box.

"What this is really about is having ideas and philosophies represented," Bobier says. "Under the present system, many people feel that if they vote for the candidate they really want, it's a wasted vote. Under proportional representation, there's no such thing as a wasted vote."

Keisling, while acknowledging that minor-party candidates face structural obstacles, says Oregon's system is more accommodating than some critics charge. Part of the reason outside candidates haven't won seats, Keisling says, is that they haven't run credible campaigns.

"I think the system is more open than is sometimes alleged, and the barriers are less than they used to be," Keisling says. "I keep waiting for some self-starting people with organizational skills to get out and run a credible race under one of the other banners. It's intriguing to me that we haven't seen that."

Bobier counters that success breeds success. Once minor candidates start winning seats--which is far more likely under proportional representation--unaffiliated voters and dissatisfied members of the big parties will be drawn to parties that better represent their views, whether they're anti-choice advocates unhappy with the GOP or militant tree-huggers upset with the Democrats.

Then, once candidates were elected under proportional representation, back-room battles between Republicans and Democrats could turn into open struggles between numerous competing ideologies.

Veteran Salem watcher Bill Lunch thinks it could get ugly.

"Can you imagine how difficult it would be to get a budget passed with seven parties with seven different goals?" says Lunch, a political science professor at Oregon State University. "There would be enormously more horse trading because you'd have to overcome party and philosophical divides. It's a recipe for a very heavily schismatic, divided Legislature that would be difficult to manage."

Bobier shrugs at Lunch's concern. Democracy is supposed to be messy, he says. That's its strength. "Efficiency shouldn't be the only goal," Bobier says. "One party would be really efficient."