Bill Sizemore is certainly a familiar figure in the initiative wars, so his presence on the ballot this time is more normal than not. His Measure 42 - the proposed ban on using credit scoring for setting insurance rates or sales - is still more than a little intriguing, because it appears to break a pattern of another kind.
Sizemore is a conservative, and usually found in opposition to government spending and regulation. Measure 42 is quite emphatically an extension of government regulation, a point Sizemore acknowledges.
So why is he doing it?
In a post on Oregon Catalyst, he first delivers a thoroughly convincing argument against credit scoring (with which we take no issue). But whart about the matter of regulation? He then explains: "I realize that some of my fellow conservatives might object to more government regulation of business, which this measure is. To them, I would simply respond: When government requires citizens to buy a product, as is the case with insurance, the product is no longer truly a "free enterprise" product. We have to buy their product. We have no choice. When we are required by law to buy a product, the playing field is automatically tilted in the seller's favor, in which case it is important that reasonable controls be installed to insure that consumers are not gouged. Passing Measure 42 is the right thing to do. Credit scoring is an unconscionably unfair and discriminatory practice."
There's one glitch. While governments do in some cases require purchase of insurance (for motor vehicle drivers, for instance), it doesn't in many others - health or renter insurance, for instance. As we undertand Measure 42, its provisions would cover them all.
The argument Sizemore presents for his issue is fundamentally sound. We won't even suggest that he needs a new fig leaf for it.