Welcome to the Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, Brew.
By: Lara Bonatesta
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- A comprehensive look at 124 years of ballot measures in Oregon
- Voters to decide if Musk’s SpaceX will get its own hometown
- The Senate has confirmed 18 of Trump’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees
A comprehensive look at 124 years of ballot measures in Oregon
Ballotpedia’s Historical Ballot Measure Factbook will document nearly 200 years of direct democracy in the United States. This ongoing research effort will provide an unparalleled resource for researchers, reporters, and the public on how ballot measures have evolved, the issues they have covered, and their role in our civic life.
We introduced this project last summer when we featured Texas’ historical ballot measures and gave Brew readers a sneak peek at what to expect as we expand our Fact Book to all 50 states. Since then, we’ve published summary content about California, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Today, let’s look at historical ballot measures in Oregon. Oregon adopted the initiative and referendum process in 1902 with a 91.63%-8.37% vote. Oregon was the third state to adopt initiative and referendum, following South Dakota and Utah.
Our comprehensive inventory of Oregon’s ballot measures spans from 1900 to 2024.
In that time, Oregonians decided on 881 ballot measures, approving 411 and defeating 470 – a 46.7% approval rate. The average approval rate of the six states we’ve published summary content on so far is 59%.
The chart below shows the total number of measures voters decided on in each decade. Between the 1900s and 2020s, Oregon voters decided on an average of nearly 68 measures each decade.
Between 1900 and 2024, the Oregon Legislature or a commission put 437 measures on the ballot, while there were 444 citizen initiatives. Legislatively-referred measures were approved 58% of the time, compared to 36% for citizen initiatives.
Oregon ballot measures have addressed 81 unique topics, with some addressing multiple topics in one measure.
Here is a selection of important and interesting measures from the Oregon Factbook:
- Between 1884 and 1912, Oregon voters decided on six measures related to women’s suffrage. Voters approved women’s suffrage in 1912 after rejecting it in 1884, 1900, 1906, 1908, and 1910.
- The original Oregon Constitution, adopted in 1857, included a provision prohibiting Black and multiracial persons from coming, residing, or being within Oregon, or holding real estate, making contracts, or maintaining suits in the state. The provision was moot with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment in 1868. Voters rejected removing the provision from the Oregon Constitution in 1900 before repealing the language in 1926.
- In 1922, voters approved an initiative requiring children between eight and 16 to attend a public school. On June 1, 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the initiative violated the U.S. Constitution.
- In 1994, Oregon became the first state to approve an initiative authorizing physician-assisted death.
- In 2020, voters approved Measure 110, decriminalizing drugs in the state. The Legislature re-criminalized the possession of certain drugs as misdemeanors in 2024.
- In 2024, voters defeated a measure that would have established ranked-choice voting for federal and state executive offices. Oregon voters had decided on six ballot measures related to electoral systems before 2024, including top-two primaries in 2008 and 2014, and proportional representation-type systems in 1910, 1912, and 1914. In 1908, voters approved an initiative allowing voting systems that enable a “direct or indirect expression of [a voter’s] first, second or additional choices.”
Voters to decide if Musk’s SpaceX will get its own hometown
According to U.S. Census data from 2020, there are roughly 19,500 incorporated places in the U.S. These range from small towns and boroughs to big cities, and they are one of the foundational political units of our democracy. If voters in an unincorporated part of Cameron County, Texas, pass a local ballot measure on May 3, creating the city of Starbase, that number will grow by one.
Ballotpedia covers a selection of the thousands of local ballot measures that voters across the country decide every year. What makes the ballot measure in Starbase interesting is that it is in the home of SpaceX, the American space technology corporation Elon Musk founded in 2002.
Starbase is SpaceX’s industrial complex and rocket launch facility located in unincorporated Cameron County. On Dec. 11, 2024, a group of SpaceX employees filed a petition to create the city of Starbase. According to the New York Times’ J. David Goodman, Musk had long considered the idea of creating a town where his technology companies would be headquartered. But the official push to make it a reality happened only recently, as the number of SpaceX employees grew to a level that made getting the necessary petition signatures to put the idea on the ballot possible. Musk also owns a home in Cameron County.
On Feb. 10, County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr. announced that backers of the ballot measure had met the signature requirement and ordered the measure to be placed on the May 3, 2025, ballot. Treviño said, “If the election passes, this will be the newest town in Cameron County since Los Indios in 1995. We look forward to seeing the outcome of this election.”
If approved, Starbase would become a Type C general law municipality – meaning it has 201 to 4,999 inhabitants and less than two square miles of surface area – with a commission form of government comprising a mayor and two commissioners. Elections for mayor and commissioner will be held at the same election. The candidate for mayor is SpaceX’s security manager, Gunnar Milburn. Candidates for the commissioner positions include Jenna Pertzelka, SpaceX Operations Engineering Manager, and Jordan Buss, SpaceX Senior Director of Environmental Health and Safety.
Kathryn Lueders, the general manager of Starbase, said, “To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Starbase is located in the Boca Chica region near Brownsville, at the southeasternmost tip of Texas. SpaceX selected the area as its rocket launch facility, Starship production and testing location, and SpaceX headquarters, first breaking ground in 2014. As of June 2024, Starbase had roughly 350 acres of land, 220,000 square feet of manufacturing space, and 20,000 square feet of spacecraft bays. Starbase hosted more than 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors.
Proponents were required to collect signatures from at least 10% of the qualified voters within the area that would become Starbase, Texas. On Dec. 11, proponents filed 70 signatures. Cameron County Elections Administrator Remi Garza said about 154 people were registered to vote in Starbase.
An affidavit regarding the petition from SpaceX’s Senior Manager of Spaceport Operations reported that the area had less than 500 residents.
The Senate has confirmed 18 of Trump’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees
As of Feb. 25, the U.S. Senate has confirmed 18 of President Donald Trump’s (R) 22 Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees. Of these, 13 were for the main 15 Cabinet secretaries, which are consistent parts of the president’s Cabinet across administrations. At this point in Joe Biden’s (D) presidency, eight of the 15 Cabinet nominees had been confirmed, and at this point during Trump’s first term, nine of these nominees had been confirmed.
So far, Trump’s nominees have received less support from Democratic senators than they did during his first administration. In Trump’s current administration, 20 Democrats and independents who caucus with Democrats have supported fewer than 20% of Trump’s nominees. Additionally, no Democratic senators have voted in favor of a majority of Trump’s nominees.
During the transition for Trump’s first administration in 2017, there were six Democrats and independents who caucused with Democrats who voted for fewer than 20% of Trump’s nominees. There were 14 Democrats and independents who caucused with Democrats who voted in favor of a majority of Trump’s nominees.
Trump’s second-term appointees have also received less support from Democrats than Biden’s (D) nominees received from Republicans at the start of his administration in 2021. There were three Republicans who voted in favor of fewer than 20% of Biden’s Cabinet nominees and 29 Republicans who supported more than half of Biden’s nominees.
The figures for Trump’s second presidential term may change once the final four Cabinet members receive confirmation votes. Confirmations for Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Secretary of Labor, Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education, Jamieson Greer for U.S. Trade Representative, and Elise Stefanik for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations have not yet received a floor vote.