OEA info on ballot measures

Election 2008 Phone Banks for BM 60 and 58

Election 2008 phone banks are volunteer/ OEA member activities. Please call your OEA UniServ Council office to volunteer! The phone calls can be made from home, either individually or at a cell phone party. For more information on Election 2008 go to www.oregoned.org or www.defendoregon.org. Please click here for information about ballot measures 58 and 60.

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Learn How to Talk the Talk on Sizemore Measures

The Parents and Teachers Know Better Campaign — the coalition to defeat ballot measures 58 & 60 – are conducting a series of speakers bureau trainings around the state. Measures 58 & 60 are Bill Sizemore’s anti-education initiatives that are a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching Oregon’s students that will take away local control from educators, parents and school leaders — they very people who know what’s best for our kids.

OEA members can learn more about the campaign, volunteer opportunities and how to talk about the measures with colleagues, friends and neighbors at the speaker’s bureau events. Over the next two weeks, the campaign will be in Portland, Salem and Eugene. We encourage you to attend and bring your friends. Download a flyer here and distribute them at your work site.

For more information on the campaign, visit www.parentsandteachersknowbetter.com

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Voting Matters — Help Your Local Schools — Yes on 56

For years, many of your local schools have had to suffer - not because your community didn't support your schools at the ballot box, but because apathetic voters chose to sit out the election. That's not democracy.

Recently, the Voting Matters coalition — which includes OEA, firefighters, law enforcement officials, and business leaders — all of whom share the goal of restoring fairness to local elections — launched their campaign to restore democracy and basic fairness in local elections.

Measure 56 fixes an outdated law that gives more power to non-voters than to voters. Under current state law, the unfair "double majority" requirement allows non-voters to decide the outcome of certain local elections if the turn-out rate is under 50 percent. Even if an overwhelming majority of voters support a measure, their votes can be canceled out by people who choose not to even participate in the democratic process.

This has caused school districts all across Oregon to waste time and resources going back to the ballot time and again with measures that already passed, some as high as 74%, only to find the cost of the new bond to be millions more for the community.

To learn more about the Measure 56 coalition, please contact the Voting Matters campaign at 503-288-5514. For a worksite flyer, visit OEA's Election 2008 web page.