Breaking News: Initiative Sponsors Violating Oregon Law
in the newsAccording to Our Oregon, a progressive organization fighting for stable funding for public services, the sponsors of several right-wing ballot measures are violating Oregon election law and wage-and-hour law.
[ BlueOregon: Breaking News: Initiative Sponsors Violating Oregon Law ]
Did the witnesses admit to forging signatures too and then alert their employer of such fact before getting paid? The risk of such forgery was the very reason not to pay by the signature.
Is it your intent to compete with Bush to see who can burn the US Constitution First?
I could go out and pay a buck a signature to get as many signatures as I bloody well want and the AG cannot do sh*t, criminally. He could at most refuse to accept such signatures, but only those sheets where there are specific allegations of fraudulent signatures.
I could get such signatures from 51% of the electors in the preceding general election and plant them in the Secretary of State's office without ever having talked in advance with anyone from the state so as to get some sort of advance authorization to seek redress of grievances.
The Oregon Constitution provides a right to remedy for attacks on a person's character notwithstanding anything contrary that is found in statutes or -- I would argue -- a conflicting provision in the Oregon Constitution.
I could also sue BlueOregon or The Oregonian on the same terms as that of any recognized PAC.
Ellen Lowe should know better.
UPDATE: My comment there:
I still want to see someone pay 3 grand and include an insert in The Oregonian, to be signed and sent in. It would include room for one signature and thus not involve any circulator. It would thus provide no occasion for any complaint of circulator-inducement to commit fraud.
The state interest is little more than to assure sufficient public interest to warrant the cost of placing an item on a ballot. See a Colorado case on signatures. The state interest is no different than when a public body hires a pollster to measure public support.
In the classic formulation the court would demand that restrictions are narrowly tailored so as not to "burden" free speech rights. A mandatory use of circulators, rather than a mail-in thing, so as to potentially expose someone to criminal action is precisely the sort of impermissible burden that a court could and should invalidate. Fraud, if there be any, is observable from the sheets themselves, and amendable to verification through contact with any or all signors.
Speech Right's Are Confused Again
"Interestingly, that would be illegal. Or, more accurately, the signatures wouldn't be valid."
Those are two radically different propositions; which is precisely why I posed the factual issue.
It is not illegal to go around getting signatures to seek redress of grievances. To conclude otherwise would be to construe that the single path to seeking redress is through the initiative campaign process.
The significance of the signature requirement is confined to the rejection of signatures and refusal to place a matter on the ballot. I have a response letter from the SoS on that very issue, where they declined to go after me. The civil fines and the threat of criminal time (and the OEA judgment against Bill) are really all quite invalid; pending a proper case and proper advocate.
The AG has refused in the past to take my bait with my flagrant and knowing refusal to comply with reporting requirements. Just for kicks, and specifically designed to attack the technical violations. If you want to make a public records request upon the AG's office and the SoS for all my correspondence I have no objection.
Ross noted the practical limitation. But, one consideration is that signature gathering entities might actually like the requirement of high numbers of signatures and the need for circulators because it is good for business. I suppose it could also be called Economic Development because it requires the hiring of folks that might not otherwise have a job.
It is all just soap opera stuff. The battles about the parameters of free speech were thoroughly vetted in the late 1950's and routinely and universally vindicated short of nearly all objections but for violence. Unless you are an alien as in Flemming v. Nestor, and get deported AND denied social security benefits for having once been a member of a presently disfavored political party.
I have lost my Social Security potential because Congress choose to authorize the executive branch to write checks to bankers who do not like the inherent risk associated with capitalism. I am not even an alien. I hope that you would not begrudge me the freedom to seek redress, for myself and on behalf of all people that need assistance to afford an education or obtain fairly priced housing and food and medical care.
UPDATE Dec 27, 2005, more thoughts . . .
The Nader thing revealed a problem with having more than one signature on a sheet. One bad one and the SoS thought it wise to construe that they were all bad and tossed the whole sheet.
The more-than-one-signature-thing also likely triggers the requirement for a circulator's signature where they must claim to have witnessed the signing of others. If there is a circulator's signature then, technically as per statute (notwithstanding the wacko SoS), there is no requirement other than the signature alone . . no date requirement at all, nor address nor printed name not anything else whatsoever. Still, I suppose that a sheet could hold the full information from two or three signors (with room for those omitted things) and without any spot at all for a circulator. Yet, the inconsistent number of signors per sheet for a stack of sheets would complicate doing statistical sampling of sheets (which is just a convenience kind of thing).
I suppose the SoS could chose treat an entire set of data in like manner to that of multiple signatures on a sheet, and toss an entire petition if one signature is rejected as "potentially" fraudulent. The reasoning for rejecting a sheet or the whole submission is virtually indistinguishable.
The process issue should all be agonizingly mundane.
Silencing a loudmouth: Feiner v. New York (see the Black dissent). Silencing leaflets too: Beauharnais v. Illinois (see the Black dissent again). Beauharnais reads like blog, with a majority opinion and then a bunch of long individual dissents. Justice Jackson's dissent might help to illuminate the reasoning behind the application of Oregon's constitutional right to a remedy for libel, direct from the constitution itself, as distinguished from the First Amendment and free speech.
UPDATE Dec 28, more thoughts . . .
Matt, did you assume that I was somehow not neutral as to the potential outcome of some eventual measure that gets stuck in a committee or referred to the voters by a legislative body or advanced by an initiative campaign?
A petition does not require consent. Placement on a ballot can involve a few hoops. Yet the burden always remains on the state to demonstrate a compelling state interest for imposing burdens on speech, and to exclude the acceptability of alternative measures that are narrowly tailored to the compelling state interest. A circulator-free option is just such a possibility; among other possibilities each of which do not remotely carry the risk of fines or criminal time or the risk of suit for the speech costs of an opponent. Can arbitrary authority be exercised as though it were characterizable as neutral just because one possible ad hoc rationalization in court can sound reasonable? Nearly every side in a disagreement can generate at least one rational argument and thus no side's position can be considered absurd as a matter of law.
You closed debate with some notion of fascism. There are many flavors of national socialists. You could take that debate to the wikipedia:Fascism site to bring clarity to their debate on what it means.
I am concerned with preserving the rights of individuals against interest groups, and their battles, that routinely render the individual irrelevant. That, and the need for the equal privileges and immunities clause to afford every individual no less than that which is accorded to any of the various incorporated entities (and their interested beneficiaries) that have been spawned over the years. I would like to assume that you share this goal.
Thug Undefined
My comment there:
December 12, 2005
John Foote
Clackamas County District Attorney
807 Main Street
Oregon City, OR 97045
RE: Ledbury Public Records Request Upon Clackamas County DA's Office
Dear Mr. Foote:
Context and Legal Standard First
ORS 192.465(2) provides in part:
(2) The failure of an elected official to deny, grant, or deny in part and grant in part a request to inspect or receive a copy of a public record within seven days from the day of receipt of the request shall be treated as a denial of the request for the purpose of determining whether a person may institute proceedings for injunctive or declaratory relief under ORS 192.450 or 192.460.
The November 29, 2005, letter to me from the Clackamas County DA's Office, signed by David F. Paul, Sr. Deputy District Attorney, reads in part:
"In order to comply with ORS 192.470, your petition must note the date your request was denied and by whom."
That letter pertained to my November 22, 2005, petition to the DA's office for help on a November 8, 2005, hand delivered public records request upon the Oregon Trail School District (OTSD).
For purposes of seeking injunctive relief in court on that earlier petition I am satisfied that the DA's November 29, 2005, letter is sufficient, in and of itself, to constitute a denial for purposes of ORS 192.465(1). The non responsiveness of the DAs letter here is no less of an effective denial than the OTSD's choice to ignore the request which prompted my petition.
This is a wholly new "request," not petition
(1) I would like to know the mere number of public records petitions the Clackamas County DA's office has received in each of the last three calender years, inclusive of this year thus far.
(2) I would also like to know the number of such petitions where the DA's office has asserted (in a letter to the petitioner, or by not responding) that the public body may effectively ignore such request in a similar manner to that of my request upon the OTSD. I would like to review and inspect such petitions and response letters that may exist.
Your office, I suppose, could apply the same standard to this peculiar public records request as that applied to my request upon the OTSD, and simply ignore it. Your office could also reassess the November 29, 2005, letter and draft a new, more responsive, one.
Respectfully,
Ron Ledbury
4522 NE Cully
Portland, OR 97218
=============
I don't have 250 bucks for a filing with the Employment Relations Board.
I don't have enough money to cover the filing fees for Clackamas County court to demand release both as to the Oregon Trail School District and the additional case against the Clackamas County DA's office.
I had asked the OTSD for the simple number of folks for whom the district was paying fair share dues during the period when there was no valid contract authorizing such payments pursuant to Oregon labor law.
Can you define hard ball? Suppose I demanded the same remedy from the ERB that was recently issued . . . public employer payment to a public employee union of union dues, from the employers funds rather than as a deduction from the employees. Wouldn't that get you fired up?
Thug.
Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?
You could always ask the Clackamas County DA's office what is up.
I can today plant a sign on the grounds of the OTSD headquarters on behalf of OregonLiberty.us in my effort to represent the interests of the tier-three PERS teachers. I have pictures from the signs of others and I would demand no less of an accommodation by the district.
UPDATE Dec 29, 8PM . . . offering further reasoning seems futile . . .
I can build a case. It can involve the OEA and even the DA and the attorney representing the district.
There are some initiatives that pertain to unions and dues collection. It is better to throw in a little offense so that you aren't just playing defense.
Why stop up short at name calling when your position is stronger than that?
I would hope that panchopdx could figure it out and boil it down so that it makes sense to you.