Oregon AG Goes After "Assault Weapons"

[Ben]

A couple of things:

1) WTF with the grenade launchers lately?!? And then if we say something about their lack of understanding, we're "deflecting from the issue." WTF do you think talking about grenade launchers is doing, you morons?

2) This was apparently pushed to the AG by a "Portland clergy group". They could easily get all the signatures they need just in Portland. So something I thought about was - what if, in order to get something on the ballot, you not only needed the signatures, but you needed signatures from every county in the state in some proportion related to county population? Then if say, you had a 20 county state and you got the required signatures from 11 or more counties, you could get the initiative on the ballot. So for this initiative you might need (for the OR example) 10,000 signatures from Multnomah County, which would be easy, but also 100 signatures from Grant County, which might be impossible.


http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/04/oregon_attorney_general_drafts.html

[Jamisjockey]

A couple of things:

1) WTF with the grenade launchers lately?!? And then if we say something about their lack of understanding, we're "deflecting from the issue." WTF do you think talking about grenade launchers is doing, you morons?

2) This was apparently pushed to the AG by a "Portland clergy group". They could easily get all the signatures they need just in Portland. So something I thought about was - what if, in order to get something on the ballot, you not only needed the signatures, but you needed signatures from every county in the state in some proportion related to county population? Then if say, you had a 20 county state and you got the required signatures from 11 or more counties, you could get the initiative on the ballot. So for this initiative you might need (for the OR example) 10,000 signatures from Multnomah County, which would be easy, but also 100 signatures from Grant County, which might be impossible.


http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/04/oregon_attorney_general_drafts.html

Anti gunners will anti gun.

Skipping ahead to the bolded part, so it's a slight thread hijack.
Several libertarian things I've read (including fiction and non fiction) have mentioned forms of this up to and including unanimous support for items to pass legislatures.  The reasoning being that even in a representative government, a slim margin of the majority passing an initiative of some sort, passed by legislators who were elected by a slim majority of voters, means that in reality the majority never consented to said initiative.
For items to get on a ballot by signature, your idea is brilliant.  I saw a population map of the state of Virginia, which showed that more than half the population is only in about 7 counties total.  It would be easy to get anti-gun ballot initiative signatures in many of those counties, even though the rest of the state would never support such trash.

[MillCreek]

Much like Portland/Multnomah county dominates Oregon politics, Seattle/King county does the same in Washington.  There are plans to have various gun control initiatives on an upcoming ballot, and the smart money is that sufficient signatures and then subsequent votes for approval will come out of King County, regardless of what the rest of the state wants.

[230RN]

I've been offering the idea that we have to split off power from the densely populated areas for years... even before some rural counties in Colorado threatened (jokingly) to secede from the State on this account.  I came to the tentative conclusion that possibly the only equable way of doing it was to split the state into grid sections, each one having the same vote weight as any other.  (Similar to 2 Senators per state, regardless of population or size.)

While there are other problems with arbitrarily defined grid sections (a lot of evil could be generated simply by selection of the grid section sizes for instance), but at least it would be a step forward in terms of breaking up the tyranny of the cities over rural areas.

Terry, 230RN

[Kingcreek]

Illinois would be a better place if the half of the state's population that lives in Chicago/Cook County didn't screw up the whole state with thier politics.

[Scout26]

Illinois would be a better place if the half of the state's population that lives in Chicago/Cook County didn't screw up the whole state with thier politics.

I have no problem with legislative districts being drawn by population, but a senator should represent 2 counties and chosen by both county boards.  Governor should be by electors with each county getting one vote.  No More 3-County Quinns.

[Ben]

Interesting coincidence regarding my signature thought: I just caught this article on my news feed, and apparently Idaho already does something similar and makes signature gatherers get their signatures from across state legislative districts. I wonder how many other state do something similar?

To put a voter initiative on the ballot, Idaho requires organizers to collect the signatures of 6 percent of the state’s registered voters, which amounts to just over 56,000 people. To ensure those signatures come from all across the state, organizers have to get signatures from 6 percent of voters in each of 18 of the state’s 35 state legislative districts. Reclaim Idaho announced last week that it had met the second standard.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/medicaid-expansion-idaho-ballot-initiative_us_5ae77753e4b02baed1bd2ee0