Which positions to start with for jury election

[Paul Melman]

I was wondering what you guys were thinking for how to approach the first ballot initiative project. What position should be elected by jury? 

Maybe DA of larger cities like Portland? Or criminal/diversion court judges? Those are typically less salient elections that voters pay less attention to anyway, and often are controversial due to tension between the left/right social justice/public safety focuses. 

Here in NJ those positions are appointed by the governor, and that comes with its own pitfalls. 

Thoughts? 

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

I wonder if it would be easier to start off with local elections in smaller towns. Easier to canvass for votes via direct outreach. Politics are more informal, less competitive, so people may be willing to try out new ways of doing things. Useful stepping stone to larger towns/cities, once we're successfully proven the concept.

Amusing anecdote, I looked up the local government for the town I just moved to. Apparently our mayor isn't even elected. We have 5 elected members in our township committee, and every year the committee "selects a mayor and deputy mayor from among its membership."

Regards,
Rajiv

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "election by jury" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to election-by-ju...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/election-by-jury/70f36373-4cf5-4549-b0de-e08064d6e345n%40googlegroups.com.

[Clay S]

district attorneys are county, not city. and in oregon, city attorneys are generally appointed rather than elected. the city attorney positions in major oregon cities such as portland, salem, eugene, and gresham are typically filled by appointment rather than election.

I had initially thought of maybe trying for judges which would seem appropriate, but in many states including Oregon, State Law says they have to be elected, in language which essentially forces a normal election by the general public. 

Maybe a county district attorney could be useful, but we probably want to start in smaller cities where it's much less costly to get the signatures to get it on the ballot, as well as running the campaign.

One baby steps approach I had considered was using it for commissions. I don't know if they are competitive enough to make an election process meaningful, but ordinarily they are appointed by various people in city government. Imagine if you said we're going to have four seats on this commission that are elected by jury. Not only are you starting with something small stakes that normally isn't elected anyway, you're hybridizing it. 

If we go straight for city councils, I'm thinking we would want to do something like add a few seats and make those elected by jury, so that the existing seats are still directly elected and I will feel less drastic to voters.

[Paul Melman]

Hybrid county commissions or town councils sound like a promising possibility. How would we go about it? Try to find towns where people are unhappy with their local governments? Perhaps ones that are dealing with some contentious issue or budget problems? Or maybe ones with retiring incumbents and no clear replacement? Then pitch election by jury as a solution.

Maybe the COCAP folks would collaborate, are you in touch with them?

[Clay S]

they don't have to be explicitly "unhappy". fargo and st louis both adopted approval voting by a landslide, and there wasn't any broad discontent or anything. there was a task force in fargo to look into the issue of vote splitting, where people were winning elections with like 13% support. the commission supported approval voting by a 4/7 majority but the council just ignored it. so they got signatures and put it on the ballot.

you're on the invite to talk to josh/COCAP on tuesday. not sure if you can make it but we'lle surely find out about their interest in cooperating.

mainly i think we need to get fiscal sponsorship, and a few more people as part of our team, and start looking for donors and candidate cities/counties to run our ballot measure. we should start working more on the details of the proposal at some point soon i think.

[Paul Melman]

Yeah good point, people seem to like the idea well enough that it could pass without discontent.

And yeah I'll be at the meeting on Tuesday. I think I got mixed up and thought Josh was the DemNext guy.

Should I start probing my connections to see if anyone might be interested in contributing, whether financially or through volunteering? I think I know a couple people in the area.

[Clay S]

wait. this might be it! if city attorneys are elected in other states, but appointed in oregon, then it wouldn't be "weird" to have them elected by jury. indeed, it would seem more democratic, not less. you're not taking away the right to vote on a particular elected official, because it's currently appointed in every oregon city that i know of.

electing the city attorney with a jury could be political genius.

[Paul Melman]

Idk how common it is to elect municipal DAs outside of big cities, but in NYC each borough elects their own and Alvin Bragg, the DA for Manhattan, has been very controversial. My understanding is that Larry Krasner, the DA in Philly, has also been somewhat controversial (elected as well). And of course there was the fairly high profile recall of Chesa Boudin in SF recently. Perhaps election by jury rather than the general public could be a way to make the process of selecting a prosecutor more democratic while avoiding the pitfalls made by these other cities.