Josephine County Charter — What is it & Why this Article

Soon, Josephine County’s Charter Review Commission will be putting forth its updated version of the county’s governing framework. The Charter Review Commission, consisting of seven Republicans, one Democrat and one non-affiliated voter representing the cities and rural areas of the county, was hand-picked by Josephine County Commissioners in April of 2021 to update and revise the county’s charter. The charter outlines how the county should be organized, what powers elected officials should have and what administration procedures they should follow. The Review Commission was given two years to go line-by-line through the Charter to make changes based on workability and compatibility with state law if needed.

The Charter Commission will hand off its revisions to one or more citizens’ committees who will decide if the revisions have merit. If so the citizen committees will have to gather enough signatures from registered voters, 8 percent of all those who voted for a gubernatorial candidate in the last election, to get the revised charter on the ballot. Josephine County voters will then decide whether or not to approve the changes.

One major change in the report from the Commission would make county commissioner elections partisan. That change was approved by a 7 to 2 vote (all the Republicans) on the Charter Commission. Those in favor said voters would get better candidates by requiring them to run as Democrats or Republicans. These candidates would have to run in May partisan primaries, Republican against Republican and Democrat against Democrat. All other party candidates would have to collect more than 1,000 signatures to get on the general election ballot in November. The general election would pit a Republican against a Democrat and possibly a third or fourth candidate for each commissioner position.

Those opposing this change in the charter say county elected officials represent all those in the county and shouldn’t be partisan and the move would disenfranchise more than 25,000 non-affiliated voters in the county who would be unable to vote in a partisan local election. The move also has the appearance of political manipulation. In a county where registered Democrats are outnumbered 2 to 1 by registered Republican voters, Democrats can still influence a non-partisan primary by helping the more moderate candidates win. With partisan primaries, Republicans will be able to select their most partisan candidate to run against a Democrat almost guaranteed to lose in Republican dominated Josephine County. In addition, partisan candidates would tend to be influenced most by their base, make partisan-based decisions that may not be in the best interest of everyone in the county, then call any criticism of their decisions “partisan.”

Jackson County has had partisan commissioner elections since 1978. Currently, Republicans outnumber Democrats by less than 4,000 votes. In Josephine County Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly 20,000 votes. Democrats in Jackson County, combined with moderate Republicans, can hold the line against extremist candidates in a partisan election. However, more than 54,000 N/A voters in Jackson County are still left out of the primary process.

According to the Medford Mail Tribune, in 2018 an effort was made to expand the county board from three to five commissioners and make those non-partisan offices but it didn’t get off the ground. Since then various candidates for Jackson County Commissioner have floated those ideas. The Republicans who usually win Commission seats in Jackson County profess to governing in a non-partisan way so voters there haven’t decided to change that element in their government yet.

Only nine Oregon counties have partisan elections: Benton, Deschutes, Gilliam, Linn, Malheur, Marion, Sherman and Wheeler.  Benton, Deschutes and Marion (barely) have more registered Democrats while the five other counties have a large Republican majority. Josephine County would only be the 10^th out of 36 counties to require partisan local county elections if that version of a revised charter is passed by voters.

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