Ralph Nader was removed from the Oregon ballot.
S51756 Kucera v. Bradbury
http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/S51756.pdf

I cannot find any effort to confine the scope of interpretation of statutes or rules characterized as limiting fraud. Specifically, the mail-in ballot process is completely devoid of use of circulators. The mail-in ballot system is designed to allow individual signature validation while maintaining signor anonymity. The bottom line here is that if the elector’s right to participate in the mail-in ballot (and the burdens imposed on that right) are neither more nor less than for non-anonymous signature provided to a circulator then the mandatory requirement of a circulator-witness-statement cannot be required in one procedure and not the other.

This would mean that Oregon’s mail-in ballot system, which does not include a required circulators signature, is now invalid. The risk of fraud certainly exists with the mail-in ballot.

I also do not see an effort, after recognizing a burden, however slight (here causing the removal of the candidate), to examine a less burdensome alternative. Here, the elector’s direct signatures were all validated. Thus they had at least as much validity as the signature validation applied to any mail-in ballot.

I would take today’s ruling and immediately challenge the current mail-in ballot process as an example of a non-uniform application of election laws.

The Colorado case also contains wording to the effect that once a state provides for an initiative process then the full panoply of electoral rights are applied to the process.

Fraud, as I have written to Secretary of State, is but an argument to which is bootstrapped the entire circulator process crap for initiatives. If there is an insert-to-sign-and-mail-in in The Oregonian then the initiative process will have no circulators, paid or otherwise. The principal difference here, as compared to mail-in ballots, is the lack of anonymity – thus enabling the identification of fraud, but perhaps not the perpetrator. Thus this lack of knowledge of the perpetrator is no different than with the mail-in ballot (other than the fact that a given ballot was mailed to a given address. This address issue could likewise be addressed in the initiative process simply by pre-naming the signor sheets that could be mailed in like fashion to the mail-in ballots system today.

Someone could simply mimic the mail-in ballot system when obtaining initiative signatures. They could target the mailing to a subset of electors who had voted in the last election and are likely supporters of an initiative. This could wait until the next election cycle to test.

The bold attack on the mail-in ballot process could start immediately. There are no circulators to witness the signors. Is the need to maintain anonymity the sole reason to not require a witness signature? Does the need to maintain anonymity mean that we find that the risk of fraud is tolerable? If the “risk” of fraud is tolerable at the formal full fledged election then why must the risk of fraud at the mere precursor survey stage, that of measuring public support via signature gathering. The state interest in this precursor stage is only, and I mean only, to measure whether there is enough interest to justify the financial cost of placement of an item or person on the ballot. As to Nader, I would ask what the cost difference is in the voting process between inclusion or exclusion of Nader from the ballot and pamphlet. I would say that it is negligible. The requirement of a circulator signature is itself subject to facial attack.

Page 25-26 of slip opinion.

The trial court opined that there was no valid policy reason to enforce the circulator certification requirement by disqualifying the signature of an elector if the county clerk had been able to verify that the electors' signatures on the disqualified sheets were genuine. That overlooks the requirement in ORS 249.740(4) that the circulator must certify that the individual signed the sheet in the presence of the circulator. The bare presence of an elector's signature on a sheet is not enough to show compliance with that requirement. The certification requirement serves to discourage fraud in the execution of signature sheets. The Secretary of State's choice to invalidate a signature sheet if the circulator violates the certification requirement promotes that objective. The trial court's concerns in this respect were not legally justified.

Page 31-32 of slip opinion.

As a general proposition, a governmental agency may be estopped from asserting a claim inconsistent with a previous position that it has taken. Dept. of Transportation v. Hewitt Professional Group, 321 Or 118, 126, 895 P2d 755 (1995). However, one element required for estoppel is reasonable reliance on a governmental actor's misstatements. Reliance on a misstatement is not reasonable if the governmental actor had no authority to make the misstatement. Id. The alleged misstatement on which plaintiffs rely would have had the effect of negating the administrative rule that the Secretary of State enforced. Nothing in the record demonstrates that any person who may have advised the Nader campaign had (or indeed could have) any authority to negate a rule. Thus, any reliance on that statement, if made, was not reasonable. The third claim for relief is legally flawed for that reason.

Page 32-33 of slip opinion.

The United States Supreme Court has noted, in an analogous context, that a state (there, Colorado) "retains an arsenal of safeguards" to protect the integrity of a ballot-initiative process, to deter fraud, and to diminish corruption. Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., 525 US 182, 204-05, 119 S Ct 636, 142 L Ed 2d 599 (1999). The Court in Buckley specifically cited a state statute that invalidated an initiative "if [the] circulator has violated any provision of the laws governing circulation" as one example of a legitimate state safeguard. Id. at 205. The Court also noted that states "have considerable leeway to protect the integrity and reliability of the initiative process, as they have with respect to election processes generally," id. at 191, citing as an example Colorado's requirement that petition circulators attach to each petition section an affidavit containing particular factual statements. We recognize, of course, that functional differences exist between the initiative process scrutinized in Buckley and the candidate nomination procedure under consideration here. But, as noted, the underlying signature collection and circulator certification procedures are analogous. For that reason, we conclude that, according to the principles discussed in Buckley, Oregon's circulator certification procedure, and the other procedures discussed above that protect the electoral process from fraud, withstand federal constitutional scrutiny. It follows from the foregoing that the Secretary of State's disqualification of signature sheets in this case is not unconstitutional for the reasons asserted by plaintiffs.

The Oregonian
Bend.com

UPDATE: Imagine if someone prepared an insert, containing a ballot title or candidacy request, with a place to sign and then paid The Oregonian to insert it into their 200,000 odd circulation stream. Would this request be any different than a political add asking for a vote at an upcoming election? Could the Secretary of State make the “request of a signature” a crime? The process that mandates the use of a circulator and imposing fines and the threat of criminal punishment is itself a chill of core first amendment rights of the first order.

I voted for Nader last time and plan on voting for him again this time, even if as a write-in.

UPDATE LATE MORNING: Lawyers – you must treat your arguments like a chess match. That is, your arguments must not only say why you should win but you must also cover your bases. Otherwise it is like calling check-mate when it is only a check. That results in a draw. That is the effect of the court ruling; it is a draw.

I would prefer a set of facts such as those I posed above, a mimicked mail-in ballot type process for obtaining individual signatures or a set of returned Oregonian inserts. Neither of which contains any reference to circulators.

The Oregon Supreme Court too must treat it like a chess match. That is the sole point of a potential complaint in Federal Court in light of the Nader ruling. It is to reveal the flawed reasoning of allowing the fraud protection thing to expand beyond all reason, to become an exception that swallows the whole of the right to petition the government.

The Nader campaign has what I believe to be a fatal flaw, not legally but politically, in that they STOPPED gathering signatures during the final 7 or so days before the expiration of the time period provided to deliver additional signatures. This reflected a premature confidence in the amenability of the Secretary of State’s office, and the potential success in court. That is, had the campaign merely obtained 22 more sheets of 10 signatures each in that one week period (with a couple extras for bad signatures) then Nader would be on the ballot. I could not view this oversight as a tragedy by the court or even the Secretary of State. It is like a lawyer covering his ass, in court, for a mistake in advice. It thus does not make for a good case to now bring to the US Supreme Court. I could be wrong, on the facts. I would also need to see all the briefs to see if the proper arguments have been preserved, though I do not think the argument comparing the signature gathering to the mail-in ballot was made; nor do I think that this issue would be anything more than mere speculation.

In the next campaign cycle we could test both the mail-in ballot scheme and the Oregonian insert scheme, that is if someone has money to blow.

Nader still has a problem, in my personal opinion, in his policy toward pensions. I think that stocks held in retirement trusts are no more valuable than half their last traded value, in much the same way that members of the stock exchanges treat them. I could not see guaranteeing a NYSE member for having extended a 100 percent margin account to his client, rather than 50 percent, any more than I can see guaranteeing the annuity payout formulas of trustees of public and private pensions. The stocks never had that value in the first place; except they are sold and converted to cash in which case it is no longer stock held as collateral for a promise of future payout. The hedge fund craze is magnifying the imbalance between real value and mere hoped-for future gains from a greater fool. Nader does not look like he will fix this problem because he too seems to think that the pensions reflect real value rather than just a bunch of paper containing too many promises that can never in ones wildest dreams ever be fulfilled. We are in a collective rush to make 1929 a reality again and no leader dares contemplate the worst-case scenario, not even Nader. (This is yet another way to say that I am more concerned with process than the result, because tomorrow is always another day to battle again.)