You are patently WRONG! Councilor Belkot was elected to represent HER constituents, just like the others were elected to do the same! The issue is that the 4 councilors VIOLATED THEIR OATH OF OFFICE by NOT honoring the will of THEIR constituents when they voted to ignore them and support funding Light Rail O & M! Remember that 98% of the County’s 200+ precincts VOTED LIGHT RAIL DOWN! Had the 4 councilors ACTAULLY honored their oath by representing the wishes of “We the People” then we wouldn’t be having this conversation! Councilor Belkot was the ONLY councilor who represented the TRUE wishes of the citizens of Clark County! You need to go back and rethink your misplaced conclusions! .

Thanks Jack, I appreciate your comments. I’ll be honest, I’ve been disturbed by the reactionary nature of many of the comments as well as the unwillingness to actually engage with the real, practical ramifications of many of the positions espoused by the “leading voices.”

It always seems to come back to, “I don’t like you/it/whatever, therefore you/it/whatever must be wrong.”

It has not escaped my notice that many of the commenters are anonymous (or easily could be – not like there is identity verification), but that it’s seemingly only an issue for those that disagree with the majority view.

I give Mr. Vance credit for his willingness to at least allow dissenting voices. Whatever criticisms one might level about equal reporting or bias, he has the integrity to keep an open forum for (mostly?) respectful dialogue.

Keep fighting the good fight Forthright. In my experience, when the editor joins in with the torch and pitchfork crowd you likely have a good point.

I enjoy your observations on this website. You make valid, reasoned criticisms of the majority opinion. You do so without being condescending or rude. I could never manage that last part. I come here to better understand my community. But your ability to question the orthodoxy here, without being a jerk about it, makes this space more interesting.

I haven’t read any critiques of the actual points you tried to raise here, but apparently you must be wrong because:

1) You use a pseudonym (so do I, so do a lot of people they have never criticized for it)
2) You do too much research and your vocabulary is too large. This expressed by a contributor through a cliched old southern lawyer character and followed by the audacity to use the word “rapscallion” in a later post.
3) You are accused of being here for “sport” not “purpose”. This one is by far the most disingenuous. A huge portion of the comments here are performative either as a form of resistance or virtue signaling.

A lot of people don’t want you here Forthright. That’s why I appreciate you being here.

If you’re going to be rude about it, here’s a very short version:

The critical problem with your analysis is that we are “represented” by our elected officials. That’s the entire purpose of holding elections in the first place.

Would you argue that the President only holds 32% of the power of his office, because that’s the actual proportion who voted for him? Of course not.

You can’t simply dismiss a 4-1 vote on some vague supposition that they “aren’t representative” because of your own biased opinions on the subject.

People were elected and they are empowered to act on behalf of their constituents. That’s the “common sense reality” of how our system works.

I decline your ridiculous homework assignment. I was once called a monumental word waster. I wonder what that person would think of you?

You make a number of ridiculous assertions based on semantics and hypothetical.

You are correct to assert we don’t know exactly how split Clark County residents are when it comes to light rail. I’m very comfortable it is not 80/20 in favor as you attempt to make an argument for, therefore our current County Council is not representative of their constituents as you attempt to assert.

And, as I have pointed out, the issue at hand in this conversation is the maintenance and operations of TriMet’s Yellow Line extension into Vancouver. I don’t need any analytics to tell me there is no chance that 80 percent of Clark County residents are in favor of C-TRAN paying for that expense. Had a vote of the C-TRAN Board taken place and Marshall voted for the new language and Belkot voted to return to the old language, that 1-1 split would have been much more representative of our community than 2-0.

You are one of the reasons I rarely engage on these threads. You’re participation here is for sport, not purpose. You avoid common sense and reality in favor of an attempt to make your case with your skills of debate, regardless of how absurd that deduction actually is.

For now, go on using our comment threads for your anonymous blather. I will continue to approve your comments as long as it remains appropriate to do so.

Thanks for your thoughts here, Ken. I’d offer two of my own for your consideration in response:

(1) I found your closing sentence to be a bit confusing (maybe, concerning?). Each member of the County Council was elected by a majority of the voters in their district. I don’t think there is any meaningful evidence to suggest that the Council members supporting the change are any less representative of their constituents than Ms. Belkot.

In fact, if we count and pool individual “votes for” each candidate we arrive at a combined 84k vs 20k (80% support, 20% opposed). If we use a “votes for minus votes against” paradigm (to better incorporate opposition within districts), we’re still looking at 7,278 vs 3,466 (68% support, 32% opposed).

At the very least, I don’t think there is any evidence-based support for your argument that the four Council members supporting the change are somehow “less representative” of their constituents.

(2) On that same note, I wanted to briefly address the idea that Clark County holds a “majority opposed to light rail.” The three votes that are most frequently invoked to make this argument are all well over a decade old. None of them captured a majority of registered voters (the most recent capped at around 30%), none reached an 80% consensus (as per your claim), and the population of the county has actually increased by a greater number of people than the total that voted on the most recent advisory.

Given their age, non-representativeness, and the ongoing demographic shifts in the county, I don’t think that these votes provide significant evidence of an ongoing majority opposition, much less one compelling enough to warrant unilaterally overturning the decision of the rest of the board.

That last sentence is, I think, the really compelling issue here and the one I’m most interested to get your thoughts on.

It feels concerning to me that the justification being offered for Ms. Belkot’s decision is that she is somehow a qualitatively “better” representative than her four colleagues and that therefore her decisions should, in a very real and practical way, “count” for more. This despite the fact that she represents significantly fewer people – seemingly flying in the face of the most basic principles of representation and majority rule.

I guess I’m wondering:

(a) How you reconcile those ideas in the larger philosophical sense?

That is, apart from the specific issue at hand, how would you address concerns about the idea of effectively disenfranchising elected officials on the basis of unconfirmable claims about the quality of their representation?

And

(b) How would you address questions raised about the lack of contemporary evidence recommending opposition?

This would encompass theoretical question like: How long are should we be allowed to hold on to prior policy positions before we’re allowed to reconsider? How reliable and/or comprehensive should our evidence in support of those positions be? How stringent should we be about the interpretations that people can draw from specific questions about more general positions?

Perhaps waxing a bit philosophical, but I think these are critically important things to discuss, given that they seem to drive so much of modern political conversation.

Michelle disputes that vote ever took place. And, even if it did its not representative of the Clark County citizens who have repeatedly shown a majority opposed to light rail. Specifically, in this case, it’s safe to say that 80 percent of Clark County citizens are not in favor of their transit agency paying maintenance and operations for TriMet’s light rail extension. So a 4-1 split of this County Council does not represent their constituents.

Battle Ground CTRAN Rep Troy McCoy said he would follow the directive of the council and vote to return to 2022 conditions of NOT funding Light Rail O&M. Then, instead of casting his vote that way, he voted to table the issue. Molly Coston from Washougal did the same thing. If these two had voted as they said they planned to, representing the majority in their city, CTRAN would not be spending $ on light rail today.

Yes, and the other four people who were elected, and their constituents, deserve for their votes to be counted as well. We have four votes on the council in favor and one vote against. On the Board, that is being translated into one vote in favor and one against. Tell me how it’s the case that 4 against 1 is being translated into equal votes? Where is the representation of the actual majority?

Yes, the Council is a representative of the people – that’s entirely the point.

The Council is comprised of representatives elected by the people. The Council supports the change at a vote of 4-1 – Ms. Belkot, in her capacity as the lone dissenting vote, is effectively overriding the majority position of the Council.

It ceases to a representative republic if the minority viewpoint can arbitrarily overrule the majority.

I’m still waiting for someone to explain how it’s remotely fair or ethical that Ms. Belkot can have her 1 vote count as equal to a combined 4 other people’s votes – that’s not how majority rule has ever worked.