TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2020
Baker City, Oregon
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OUR VIEW
Brown
thwarting
voters
Oregonians passed Measure 110 by a wide margin
in November. It means decriminalization of personal
possession of small amounts of illegal drugs, includ-
ing cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and oxyco-
done as of Feb. 1.
That’s going ahead as planned. But something else
is missing.
Measure 110 was also supposed to kick off more
funding for drug treatment options for Oregonians.
Gov. Kate Brown’s budget delays that for more than
a year.
The measure approved by voters clearly says
things such as: Addiction recovery centers “within
each coordinated care organization service area shall
be established and operational by October 1, 2021.”
Brown’s budget doesn’t allow the money part of the
measure to start until July 2022.
What’s Brown’s game? Thwarting the will of vot-
ers?
It could be read that way. She does have her rea-
sons. They aren’t bad ones.
The way the measure was written, it swipes all
the money from marijuana tax above $11,250,000
quarterly and puts it toward addiction services. That
money currently goes to things like schools and state
police. The measure didn’t create new money for
treatment. It took money away from other worthy
causes. That’s one of the reasons we editorialized
against the measure.
And so Brown decided to delay the funding switch.
“In the Governor’s budget we have found ways to fi ll
the funding gaps created for schools, public safety,
and existing health services in the second year of the
biennium,” Charles Boyle, a press secretary for the
governor, said in a statement to OPB. “It wasn’t pos-
sible to fi ll those funding gaps immediately while still
maintaining critical services during the COVID-19
pandemic.”
Legislators could step in and change the governor’s
plan. Her budget is just a starting point for debate.
They could also rewrite Measure 110 by passing a
bill that changes how it works or fi nd another way to
fund it.
Elections have consequences, as they say. And
no matter how you may feel about the wisdom of
decriminalization of some illegal drugs and taking
money from schools for drug treatment, is it right for
the governor to undermine the will of the voters? Or
does the pandemic make it OK?
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City Herald.
Columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions
of the authors and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald.
2020 election shows that
pollsters need to get better
By Doug Schwartz
Donald Trump was not the fi rst pres-
idential candidate to perform notably
better on election day than preelection
polling had predicted. Ronald Reagan
did it in the 1980 election. So did Bob
Dole in 1996.
Still, the gap between the 2020 poll-
ing and the actual results has caused
considerable dismay. Since the election,
a lot of people have asked the same
question: “What went wrong with the
polling?”
I’ve been leading the Quinnipiac
University Poll for over 25 years. And
while a lot of work remains before
there is a fi nal diagnosis of this year’s
election polls, I don’t think it will show
that polling has lost its value. I already
see some early indicators of what went
right — as well as wrong — this year.
In general, public opinion polls have
had a good track record over the last
100 years. However, election polls have
never been perfect, nor should that be
expected. Uncertainty is part of the
equation — whether because of the
margin of error, who turns out to vote
or the number of undecided voters. And
this year had more than its fair share
of unpredictability, with a global pan-
demic, record voter turnout and major
procedural changes in the way Ameri-
cans voted with mail-in ballots.
Some believe that President Trump
himself may have introduced an added
level of uncertainty in gauging public
opinion. Since the 2016 election, many
have discussed the possibility of the
“shy” Trump voter — voters who didn’t
want to admit their support for Trump
to pollsters. A task force created by the
American Association for Public Opin-
ion Research analyzed the performance
of the 2016 election polls and did not
fi nd evidence of such voters, but it’s
worth investigating whether such a
phenomenon happened this year.
In Quinnipiac’s polls leading up to
the election, about 1 in 10 likely voters
wouldn’t say who they had already
voted for or indicated that they either
weren’t sure or wouldn’t share who
they were voting for. Despite the
unusually high number of voters not
revealing their vote preference, post-
election analysis shows that our poll
and others were generally accurate on
the percentage of Joe Biden’s support,
but underestimated Trump’s support.
While this analysis is preliminary,
it could certainly suggest that some
of the voters who did not share their
vote preference ended up voting for
Trump. Election polls will need to
explore strategies to better capture the
intentions of this undecided segment of
the electorate, such as developing en-
hanced follow-ups for those reluctant
to disclose vote preference and new
ways to build trust between respon-
dents and interviewers.
Couple this dynamic with historic
voter turnout, and the uncertainty
in polling estimations starts to really
stack up. Because polling analysis
makes assumptions about voter
turnout, whenever turnout is unusu-
ally high or low there is increased risk
that the polls will be less accurate. It
is possible that more Trump voters
showed up than expected on election
day, and/or fewer Biden voters did. We
may have a clearer picture when we
get the fi nal reports of exit polls in the
next few weeks.
Another factor this year is the
unprecedented amount of mail-in and
early voting, which may have encour-
aged new or infrequent voters to
participate. Without a history of party
allegiance, these voters could be more
likely to change their minds, further
adding to unpredictability in the elec-
tion outcomes.
Pollsters face a number of meth-
odological challenges that must be
reviewed as part of this post-election
analysis. For example, with state polls
often limited to calling voters with
phone numbers that are local to a
particular state, pollsters are exploring
how to contact individuals who have
out-of-state cellphone numbers but live
(and vote) in the state being polled.
And, as many Americans continue
to abandon landlines, would polls be
improved if pollsters relied even less
on calling people at those numbers?
A possible solution includes inte-
grating data gathered using differ-
ent forms of communication such as
email and text with phone surveys.
Pollsters could also consider reduc-
ing the amount of completed surveys
that come from landlines, increasing
those from cellphones or even drop-
ping landline calling altogether since a
cellphone-based sample may be more
representative of the general popula-
tion.
Polls cannot provide pinpoint accu-
racy nor should that be expected since
they are still an estimate of a snapshot
in time. But the polling industry pro-
vides a valuable service in taking the
pulse of the American electorate on key
issues and voting intentions.
It is reasonable for the public to
expect the polls to come closer to the
mark than they did this year, and poll-
sters will need to review their methods
and make necessary adjustments. This
doesn’t mean polling is irrevocably
broken, but it does need a tuneup.
Doug Schwartz is associate vice president and
director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
OTHER VIEWS
Biden should withdraw Health Secretary nomination
Editorial from The San Diego
Union-Tribune:
President-elect Joe Biden’s push
for a diverse leadership team is
welcome and smart. The centuries in
which the federal government was
almost entirely run by White men
faded under Presidents Bill Clinton,
George W. Bush and Barack Obama,
only to resurge under President
Donald Trump.
It’s heartening to see Biden pick
the fi rst woman secretary of Trea-
sury (Janet Yellen) and fi rst Black
secretary of defense (Lloyd Austin).
Yellen, a former Federal Reserve
Board chair, and Austin, a retired
four-star general, are eminently
qualifi ed.
But it is diffi cult to grasp why
Biden has tapped California At-
torney General Xavier Becerra to
be secretary of health and human
services. At a time when the nation
faces its worst health crisis in more
than a century, it is baffl ing that
Biden would choose an HHS chief
with no public health experience.
There are many Latinos who would
have been far better choices, starting
with Dr. Antonia Novello, the former
U.S. surgeon general, and Cecilia
Munoz, an Obama domestic policy
adviser.
But concerns about Becerra
should extend far beyond the fact
that he doesn’t have the appropriate
background to lead the push against
a pandemic that could end up killing
a half-million Americans or more. As
California’s attorney general, he has
been a sharp disappointment.
Becerra has continued the ugly
tradition of state attorney generals
writing grossly misleading bal-
lot language on propositions put
before voters. In 2018, he described
a measure that would repeal a $5
billion annual increase in taxes and
fees on motorists approved by the
Legislature and then-Gov. Jerry
Brown as eliminating “certain road
repair and transportation fund-
ing.” That helped it be rejected.
This year, he described a measure
that would have created the largest
property tax hike in state history as
a proposal to increase “funding for
public schools, community colleges
and local government services by
changing tax assessment of com-
mercial and industrial property.” It
failed when opponents provided the
context that Becerra wouldn’t. Yes, of
course, politics is hardball. Yet such
dishonesty shouldn’t be accepted as
par for the course.
But his lack of principle goes
far beyond that. Becerra sought to
sabotage one of the most important
police reforms of recent years: the
Legislature’s 2018 vote for a law
that mandates that law enforcement
agencies make publicly available
the discipline records of offi cers who
faced sustained allegations of mis-
conduct. Not only did Becerra side
with police unions’ absurd claim that
the law only applied to new allega-
tions of misconduct, he threatened
to prosecute members of the UC
Berkeley Investigative Report-
ing Program and its Investigative
Studios if they reported details on
past and present law enforcement
offi cers who had committed crimes,
using information provided by the
California Commission on Peace Of-
fi cer Standards and Training after a
legal, straightforward public records
request.
Becerra will likely face tough
questioning from Senate Republi-
cans simply because he is a Cali-
fornia Democrat. Senators of both
parties who know his baggage will
have far better reasons to question
his selection. His nomination should
be seen for what it is: a clear mistake
by Joe Biden.
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