In a move that sounds like it was taken from either the pages of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 or the sands of an elementary school playground, Oregon Democrats tacked on (and later removed) language to a recent bill that would make a “yes” vote on a particular referendum be a vote against adopting the resolution and vice versa. 

Ordinarily, we jaded political commentators could chalk that up to petty party politics intended to mess with the Republicans, like something the Joker would do to Batman. But this legislative subterfuge was intended to confuse Oregon voters, which is something the Fourth Estate can simply not afford to silently watch happen. And to be honest, I’m still having trouble figuring out what I would do were I an Oregonian confronted with this wording. Here’s a sample taken from HB 2414: 

“A measure referred to the people by referendum petition may not be adopted unless it receives an affirmative majority of the total votes cast on the measure rejecting the measure. For purposes of this subsection, a measure is considered adopted if it is rejected by the people.” 

Now, this isn’t the first time politicians have tried to prey upon the arbitrary nature of language in order to fool people (the definition of the word “is” may be a legitimate metaphysical problem, perhaps, but certainly not a legal one), but this latest exercise in dubious wordplay seems poised to top the list of legislative subversions of language. Fortunately for everyone, however, the Democrats got cold feet and sent it back to committee to have the language removed before having the resolution voted upon. 

Naturally, though, that raises the question about why the Democrat-controlled Oregon legislature would try to pull this move on unsuspecting citizens. Turns out that it’s probably just because they don’t trust the voters to agree with them, according to The Oregonian. This particular bill was set to marginally raise taxes, something that in this economic climate would have been hard for many voters to approve of without several compelling reasons.  

Nonetheless, this is exactly the kind of politics that this country needs to avoid. On the one hand, it’s clear that politicians should not assume that they know better than us and that referenda are counter to the representative democracy we’ve somehow managed to keep running for over 200 years. They need to trust the people who elected them to be in line with them, and instead of trying to trick them, they should try to educate them about why something potentially unsavory might be good for them. 

On the other hand, there’s probably a pretty good reason why politicians feel like they need to trick us: namely, average voters are perceived as being either uninformed or misinformed, especially about things that they typically have knee-jerk reactions to, like taxes, nuclear energy, and corporate jet travel. It’s clear that we need to do our part to remain informed about not only the issues, but the political processes as well. Because if we know what’s going on, then the next time distrustful politicians try to hoodwink us, we can throw the bums out instead.