Opponents feared that reducing taxes would cause cuts to schools beyond those they blamed on Measure 5. Furthermore, they opposed the double majority rule, arguing it gave non-voters more political power than those willing to vote.
Double majority rule
Measure 47 enacted Oregon's "double majority" rule, which placed an additional requirement on state and local tax levies. The rule applies to all elections besides general elections held in even-numbered years. For a levy initiative or referral to pass in other elections, not only do more voters have to vote "yes" than "no", but at least 50 percent of registered voters must vote in the election. The double majority is a type of supermajority similar to an absolute majority.
In the U.S., general elections include presidential elections, held in even-numbered years once every four years on Election Day, the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. General elections also include midterm elections in which members of Congress, state legislators, and some state governors are chosen on Election Day in the years midway between presidential elections.
Since the passage of Measure 47, the double majority requirement has caused the defeat of many proposed local tax levies. According to the League of Oregon Cities, between 1997 and 2007 of the 1,358 total tax measures on ballots in the state, 616 passed and 742 failed, and 169 of those failures resulted from the double majority rule.[4]
In response, local governments generally prefer placing such measures on general-election ballots.[5]
The measure also led to attempts to clean up the voter registration rolls. Registered voters who had died or moved away were being counted as "No" votes with the double majority requirement.[6] (By law, Oregon ballot measures are worded so that "No" means "no change" and "Yes" means "adopt the measure.")
In 1998, Measure 53 sought to reverse the double majority provision but won only 49 percent of the vote.
In 2007, activists representing schools, the public employee union, and business interests lobbied the Oregon Legislative Assembly to scale back the requirement,[citation needed] and by June 2007 both houses of the legislature had approved House Joint Resolution 15, putting a measure before the voters on the November 2008 ballot.[7] This measure appeared as Measure 56, and would exempt elections held in May and November of any year from the double majority requirement.[7] It was later passed by voters on November 4, 2008. Proponents of the measure called the double majority rule undemocratic because, in their view, the rule gave non-voters unfair influence in the democratic process by allowing them to make measures fail that otherwise won support among the majority of those who actually voted. They also argued that because of Oregon's exclusive vote-by-mail voting system, which makes it more convenient to vote, there is no reason for people not to vote.[8]
Opponents considered unfair the idea that a small percentage of people could impose new taxes on others. They argued that the double majority rule was necessary to keep this from happening, and claimed that if it were repealed, taxes would rise too much.[9][10]