sdlsaginaw
Member
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2011
- Messages
- 41
If you're going to list de facto single party States you'd better include Oregon.Methinks that it is worth mentioning that places like IL, MD, NJ, and CA are de facto single-party states. This means that only one political party controls government and holds effective power to the point where there is no effective opposition.
There are openly-democratic competitive elections and a few token members of an opposition party are tolerated.
Accordingly, it's not just a matter of voter apathy or indifference, it's an issue of playing with a deck heavily stacked in favor of the adversary.
At this time the Democrats fully control everything here. Any liberal dream legislation can be written up, passed along party lines by supermajority, and signed directly into law by our unelected Governor. By simply including the words "declares an emergency" they even completely eliminate the referendum process so it becomes law upon signing. This is what they did with UBC here, from bill to law without a public vote (and, because it was "an emergency", a public vote was specifically disallowed)
Voting does no good (yes, I vote anyway). Everything is controlled by the blue parts of the State, especially the Portland area. That area is typically last to be counted (a bit suspicious?). I don't know how many times I've watched the numbers come in and things are lining up reasonably conservative. Then, Multnomah County gets counted and everything swaps.
We've even attempted recalls, but they're dug in like ticks. With the Floyd Prozanski recall they didn't even count the signatures. They did some statistical smoke-and-mirrors and declared it was probably short.