SALEM, Ore. — The Oregon Legislature may have an unusual request for voters in the next general election that harkens back to that fateful summer day in 1804 when a bitter rivalry between U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and the nation’s first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, was settled with a fatal gunshot. Should ongoing discussions in Salem materialize, voters would see a question on their general-election ballots asking if a 172-year-old ban on dueling by public officials — as in, the old-fashioned way of resolving fights — should be erased from the Oregon Constitution. The constitutional ban in question is Article II, Section 9, which says anyone who offers, accepts, knowingly participates in a “challenge to fight a duel … or who shall agree to go out of the State to fight a duel, shall be ineligible to any office of trust, or profit.” (this is exact language from the constitution) The article was signed into law just 30 minutes after its drafting by the second provisional legislature in 1845, almost 15 years before Oregon’s statehood, when squabbles were still often resolved by duel even decades after Hamilton’s death on the opposite side of the country. “They decided that it would not be very civil if two members of the Legislature disagreed and then shot each other on the front steps of the provisional capitol,” Republican Sen. Brian Boquist said Wednesday during the proposal’s first committee hearing. Today though, says Boquist, chief sponsor of the proposal, it’s an archaic rule that’s unnecessary for obvious reasons in modern times. But, like any change to the constitution, repealing it must be approved by Oregon voters. http://q13fox.com/2017/04/08/oregon-voters-may-get-chance-to-reverse-172-year-old-ban-on-duels/
Is this costing the state money to discuss? If it is, what in the Terry Funk is the point? Doing anything about this ban just seems like a glorified waste of money and time.
It's about making government more attractive to all of our citizens. This ban is what is keeping @MarAzul from answering the call of public service.
MarAzul, I am curious about this image from your website. Why is Cuba superimposed on Australia? barfo
I noticed it the other day when I was cleaning up. I got a chuckle seeing it, decided to keep it. Sly might know why.
Is Cuba on the opposite side of the planet if you shoot a diagonal through the planet? It seems plausible, but I could be way off. I never really did learn my geography.
Close but not quite. Sometime back, Sly responded to a post, Cuba is a big Island! So I put together this imagine to show how big in contrast it really is. Ha! So far it has only produced puzzlement.
Wrong. It's related to someone's mentality that tells them that they have nothing better to do with their time than to focus the power of the State on a 172 year old law. This has nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with a juvenile thought process.
