Publicly financed elections repeal: Reports of its death weren't exaggerated after all

First it flatlined; then--out of nowhere--it started getting a blip on the monitor again. This time, though, it looks like it's really dead.

For now.

Latest installment of undead-murderous-creature-stalks- impractical-teens movie? Nope, although you could be forgiven for thinking so. And, as with Michael Myers and the rest, fans are not completely disappointed to think he'll be back in another installment, and he will be--as long as the investors will cough up the cash.

Now, having beaten that metaphor within an inch of its life, let's review the whole story:

Voter-owned elections, approved by the Portland City Council in a 4-1 vote last May, roused the ire of institutional purists, who believed that the measure should have been referred to the voters (I have some sympathy with this group), and downtown businesses, who didn't want their access interrupted (not so much sympathy here).

(Full disclosure: I don't live in Portland; I live in the first 'burb west of Portland.)

When said business interests formed the First Things First Committee--the name intended to indicate that the issue was really about potholes and school funding, not the preservation of donor-owned elections--with the purpose of gathering signatures to put the question on the May 2006 ballot, most observers figured that clean elections' days were numbered. (Some felt this because they believed that public financed elections were unpopular on the merits; others thought so because it was the sort of issue that could get creamed by a well-funded media campaign of fudged truths and "save our children" misdirection.)

Unsurprisingly, FTFC handed in more than enough signatures by the deadline. Surprisingly, the first routine check by the auditors indicated that there were far too many invalid signatures to qualify.

Even more surpsingly, an audit of the audit suggested that the sampling mechanism that declared all those signatures to be invalid might itself be on the blink. A re-audit was immediately begun.

And still more surpisingly, the second audit determined that, no, the FTFC still didn't have enough signatures to put clean elections on the ballot for this May.

But--whether you're a institutional purist or a downtown businessman, or just a Michael Myers fan--the movement to put publicly financed elections on the ballot, and thereby kill it once and for all, is not over. It'll be back on the fall ballot, or next spring . . . or Christmas 2007, at a theater near you.

And since the bad arguments against public financing--"we need to spend that money on potholes!" (yeah, as if that's where the money would go)--are easier to fit on a bumper sticker than the good arguments for it--"downtown developers and their cohort want to finance the elections because they want to protect their pet projects"--voter education now becomes an important defense against the inevitable media disinformation campaign when the time comes.

(Postscript: Two city council candidates have qualified for public money.)