Fellow Oregonians:
Our Founding Fathers created a system that would prevent small, highly populated areas of the United States of America from turning themselves into something very much like King George and the Government of England in the 1700’s. King George and the form of government in England was every bit a dictatorial form of rule.
The Founding Fathers saw that the population of the Colonies was extremely “Diverse”. Meaning that there were a great deal of skill sets such as farming, blacksmithing, or carpentry mixed with a wide variety of Religious beliefs further mixed with ideas of self-governance showing up in the Colonies.
America was fresh off of a war. The Founding Fathers had a HUGE responsibility to create a system that would prevent small groups from being able to control the entirety of America. That system was the Electoral College.
Oregon is every bit as much “Diverse” as America was at the time of the Founding. We have a wide variety of Natural Resources such as timber and farming. Now days, we have High Tech companies such Intel and new products that can be made and sold across the globe.
Oregon has seen where small, high density populated areas have been able to completely outvote the entire State. And as such, imposing the will of that high density area on the rest of the State that has completely different backgrounds, long term goals, and resources to work with. The mantra of “Portland is controlling the entire State” has been prevalent for many years now.
What Oregon needs is an “Electoral College of the Counties”. Simply put, this would force State wide elections such as for Governor or Senators to actually campaign in the entire State instead of only those high density populated areas. Each County would be given a maximum of four votes with each vote representing 40,000 people. FYI; Oregon has a greater population than the original 13 colonies.
Further, changing how the State Senators are elected from a population based to County based representation would help in redistricting issues. Reducing the number of Senators to 18 and having them represent two “adjacent counties” would increase the value of the Senators and the responsibility of the elected office.
Very much like the United States of America with States was founded, the State of Oregon would have something you could call the “United Counties of Oregon”. And as each State has Governors, each County would have County Commissioners that would be considered as part of the Executive Branch of government.
The Electoral College of the Counties would also apply to all State-wide issues such as School Choice. And with the County Commissioners operating as Executive Branch, the Counties would have far better local control of the government.
The problem with high density population centers is something that is plaguing every State of the Union. The number one goal behind the Electoral College of the Counties is to diversify the control of natural resources back to the Counties where the local population knows how to use and live with what they have.