June 07, 2004

(Updated) Petitioners Drop Current Recall Campaign, Will Start Over Again

Rules On Circulator Certification Prompt Decision

Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.

According to word just in from the Elections Division, the recall effort against four Multnomah County Commissioners is hitting the reset button and starting again from square one later this week. To understand why, we turn to an OPB News item from earlier today:

The Secretary of State's office a few days ago warned initiative petitioners they should be aware of signature-gathering changes made since the last election. One of those concerns the date a voter signs a petition and the date the signature gatherer swears to its validity. Now those dates must be the same.
Petition sheets with dates that don't match or those with dates that have been crossed-out and changed, will invalidate the whole sheet of ten signatures. Chief petitioner for the Linn recall effort, John Belgarde, says that's had a profound effect his campaign.
John Belgarde: "We've been hittin' that ever since Tuesday afternoon to get everybody we need to get corrections, and letting them know they need to correct this in the manner that the Secretary of State has deemed acceptable."

Apparently, this rule caused more problems for recall backers (who are trying to punish the commissioners for their support of same-sex marriage) than they realized. According to John Kauffman of the Elections Division: "They are dropping the current recall efforts on the four commissioners because of circulator date and signature issues. They are going to re-file on the four commissioners later this week and work on all four at the same time."

This past Saturday, The Oregonian detailed the challenges this rule puts into place for petition signature efforts, and explains when the rule went into effect:

Some petitioners say elections officials changed the sign-and-date rule without notifying them. Elections office documents show the agency issued notice of a temporary new rule in late 2002. The rule was made permanent in April this year and is in the state's 2004 initiative manual.

In other words, the recall petitioners -- led by the infamous rule-breaking recall-hound John Belgarde -- didn't follow the rules. Appropriate, somehow, given the fact that this is precisely their presumptive beef with the four County commissioners in question.

June 07, 2004

Update

According to a report on KGW's noon newscast, recall backers reportedly will be announcing new recall efforts only against two of the commissioners in question -- Chair Diane Linn and Commissioner Serena Cruz. From this report, it would seem that they aren't planning a new recall campaign against Commissioner Lisa Naito because she remains in a regular election process for her seat. We're still waiting for other reports to see if this indeed is the case.

Also in this KGW report, we once again saw opponents of same-sex marriage outright lying, as they so often do. This time it was Belgarde himself, who accused Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury of handing down this rule at the last minute, and as an intentional effort to derail campaigns such as Belgarde's recall efforts. Apparently, Belgarde is unaware of -- or is simply willfully ignoring -- the fact that this rule is not "last minute" at all.

June 07, 2004

Update

Here we go. According to a KEX 1190 report, recall efforts agaisnt Naito and Commissioner Maria Rojo de Steffey are being dropped altogether because they would only apply to their current terms, which end in only a handful of months. If they were successfully recalled, they would only be back in office next year anyway (presuming Naito wins re-election in November).

According to this report, the circulator certification rules would have made 300-400 existing recall petition sheets completely invalid.

June 07, 2004

Update

Chuck Currie reminds that "recall backers" is a phrase which includes the editorial board of The Oregonian.

June 07, 2004

Update

The OPB story on this has it that without any sheets headed for tossing due to the certification errors, recall backers claim tey had enough signatures to force a recall election of Chair Linn.

Posted at 11:37 AM | PermalinkComments (10) | TrackBacks (3)
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Comments (10)

  1. Bob R. on 07 Jun 2004

    I'm proud to live in a state where process still matters.

    As a software developer and user manual author: It pays to read those instruction manuals, folks.

  2. Dave Lister on 07 Jun 2004

    b!X,
    If I read your account of the OPB story correctly, it says the circulators affadavit date must be the same as all the signatures on the petition. I understood that it could not be before any of the signatures, but that it could be the same or later than the most recent signature date. I had understood that the problem was with circulators affadavit dates which preceeded the signatures on the petition. If in fact the dates have to be the same, a circulator would have to use a new page each day that he collected any signatures. Can you clear this up for me?
    Thanks

  3. The One True b!X on 07 Jun 2004

    Actually, I believe the OPB story might have it wrong. What's clearly required is that the circulator sign and date their petition sheet certification on the same day which therefore appears to be why certifications which have dates crossed off or changed are being tossed.

    Thus far, I have found nothing to validate OPB's assertion that "the date a voter signs a petition and the date the signature gatherer swears to its validity" must be the same, but I am still looking to be sure.

  4. doretta on 07 Jun 2004

    I also think the OPB story has it wrong. I can't find any such requirement in any of the 2004 manuals or forms from the SOS's office.

    The relevant bit seems to be:

    "The circulator shall complete the date when the certification is signed and shall not collect any other signatures on that sheet."

    I don't find that to be crystal clear language even in terms of the circulator signature/date issue--"complete the date" is not how a person would normally put it, but at least it's a reasonable inference from what it says that as soon as you sign as the circulator you have to fill in the current date and you have to stop collecting signatures on that sheet.

    I can't find any language anywhere that even hints that the circulator has to sign on the same date as the voters.

  5. PanchoPdx on 07 Jun 2004

    Doretta posted - "I can't find any language anywhere that even hints that the circulator has to sign on the same date as the voters."

    That's because this rule is so new that it came out after the 2004 manuals were printed.


    This new rule passed in April of 2004 but (conveniently) was never properly defined by the SoS until last week. Now it has the effect of throwing out pages of signature sheets for clerical errors involving the circulator date (which was never previously required).

    The signatures may have been valid when collected, but a subsequent error by the circulator now allows the SoS to throw the whole sheet away - without notifying the signers that they have lost their right to sign due to the SoS's newly fashioned tehcnicality.

    Hmmm.....

    Changing the rules for counting votes/signatures in the middle of the process.

    Where have I heard that before?

    I know it's going to come to me soon.....

    Wasn't there a big election about three and a half years ago where some elections officials tried to get away with something like that in a major Southeastern state?

    Bradbury has been destroying the initiative process in order to save the initiative process for years now.

    Maybe, this time the major media will pick up on it, but I doubt it.

  6. The One True b!X on 07 Jun 2004

    Could you find a pointer to this rule, please, then. Because news reports consistently say these are not new rules at all, but rather than the SOS' office recently reminded people that they existed because they are different than what was in place previous election.

  7. The One True b!X on 07 Jun 2004

    It continues to be apparent that the OPB report is wrong. Here's something from an Associated Press report:

    But John Lindback, the state elections director, said the rule has been in effect since 2002.
    "It seemed to come as surprise to them," Lindback said.
    The rule requires petition gatherers to date the petitions after they sign them as witnesses to the signatures they have collected.
    "When we first adopted the rule in 2002 it seemed fairly simple and not onerous -- you not only sign it but date it," Lindback said.

    So there is no rule that says circulators must sign their certification on the same day that voters sign, which would make no sense whatsoever. And indeed, the actual rule -- that certifications must be signed and dated, and at the same time, is indeed in the 2004 recall manual.

    Which is why they are tossing certifications with information crossed out or "corrected." Those things make it impossible to determine if the certifications were signed and dated at the same time.

    So it remains the case that Belgarde and crew simply screwed up.

  8. Keith on 08 Jun 2004

    Great reporting here. I don't believe any of what the Coalition says about their reasons for not hitting the deadline - it's all spin.

    Besides the Coalition's effort being a poorly run mess (a call to John Belgarde made that apparent), they also were seen gathering petition signatures in booths set up on non-profit property (one a Church) which is against IRS guidelines for non-profit status -- something John Belgarde and his Christian Coalition, as a political organization, should be well aware of.

    Nevertheless, it would be wise to keep an eye out for this organization, they do seem to be organized heavily towards restricting the rights of their fellow Oregonians, at any cost.

    And now, on their site, they're referencing stories that such efforts against same-sex marriage, could -- at the least -- increase conservative voter turn out in November, and tip Oregon toward Bush.

  9. PanchoPdx on 08 Jun 2004

    The new "rule" in question isn't even printed because it's really a new interpretation of the April 2004 rule cited by the Oregonian (which was based upon a previously passed temporary rule involving circulator dates).

    The new "rule" was handed out last week in the form of a policy interpretation sheet. At that point the SoS had not even put the policy interpretation on state letterhead.

    Previously, if a circulator made a mistake on a date it was assumed that it could be corrected by having the same circulator initial the correction (like we all do if we mess up a check, or alter a contract provision).

    A moderately competent elections official should be able to look at the signed initials and determine that they came from the same hand as the original signature.

    This was how a number of petition drives were correcting circulator errors - by tracking down the circulator and getting them to initial the correct date.

    This was a LOT of work, very time consuming to correct a technical error through this process (after all the signatures came from registered voters people were dealing with date errors made by first-time volunteer signature gatherers).

    The problem was that about 10 days ago the SoS decided that initials were not good enough and threw out the corrected sheets anyway. After much clamor by chief petitioners, the SoS agreed that the sheets could be corrected IF the original circulators signed them again completely.

    At this point in the game, it was too late for Belgarde and crew to re-fix the sheets. It is having the same impact on the other petitions in ciruclation.

    The SoS knew all this would happen and has offered no justification for not accepting the initialed corrections.

    It's just dirty politics.

  10. doretta on 08 Jun 2004

    So Pancho, if that's true, quote the policy interpretation sheet for us so we can judge for ourselves what is going on.

Trackbacks (3)

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