Legislative Report - December Interim 2024
Governance Team
Coordinator: Norman Turrill
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Campaign Finance Reform: Norman Turrill
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Cybersecurity Privacy, Election Issues, Electronic Portal Advisory Board: Becky Gladstone
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Election Systems: Barbara Klein
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Redistricting: Norman Turrill, Chris Cobey
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Voting Rights of Incarcerated People: Marge Easley
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Governance
By Norman Turrill, Governance Coordinator
The House and Senate Rules committees met during the interim days last week. Senate Rules met Dec. 10 to consider various executive appointments and introduced three placeholder bills. House Rules met Dec. 12 to hear testimony about election integrity and to hear an update from the Legislative Oversight, Effectiveness, and Accountability Workgroup. They then introduced a bill to establish a Legislative Audit Officer (LAO) within the legislative branch.
Campaign Finance (CFR)
A CFR workgroup called by Rep. Fahey that began in June is still working to identify technical adjustments needed to ensure successful implementation of HB 4024 (2024), to recommend legislative fixes for 2025, and to consider broader policy improvements for future sessions. The workgroup includes representatives from the legislature, business, labor and Honest Elections that negotiated on HB 4024. Since such a technical fix bill would likely be introduced by the House Rules committee, it could happen at any time during the coming legislative session.
Oregon Open Primary Act
By Barbara Klein
Working with the same coalition we signed on with last year, LWVOR has helped OERC (Oregon Election Reform Coalition) produce the Oregon Open Primary Act LC #1109. This proposal is for “open” primaries (one ballot for all voters), but the section adopting ranked choice voting for general elections was removed. Rep. Gamba (D/I/WFP) and Sen. Aaron Woods (Veterans Caucus, (D/WFP)) have agreed to introduce the bill, being joined by Co-Chief Sponsors Rep. Lively (D/I/WFP), Rep. Paul Evans (D/I/WFP) and Rep. Susan McLain (D/I/WFP). At this point, there are no Republican sponsors, although we have reached out to several. We look forward to a multi-partisan effort. One Republican, Rep. Wallan from southern Oregon, is interested in parties opening their own primaries to non-affiliated voters (NAVs), but not primaries using one ballot.