He is harmless outside the little arena of authority to keep stuff off the ballot.

In case anyone missed this article at the Oregon "No Party? Good Luck Getting On the Ballot" here please read before continuing with my post.
[ NW Republican: Election Integrity Question ]

My comment:

How about adding a qualifier?

If I were to sign a document in an attempt to get Nader on the ballot, but Nader (for whatever reason) does not make it onto the ballot, then I should not be prohibited from voting in like manner to that if Nader never existed.

If Nader is not on my primary ballot, then he is not there on the ballot, like a circular sort of reasoning.

Suppose that in the interest of fairness and uniformity that the entire primary is eliminated and then everybody can do like Nader, each and every year, and hold conventions unaided at all by the elections division of the State of Oregon.

This last one is the key, it does presume that nominating conventions are a purely private matter and involves purely private associational rights. The violation, if there be one, is that unequal voting privileges and immunities (there it is again) are accorded based on that association, and whether the state chooses to place a candidate or party-affiliated-candidate on the ballot, the primary ballot. The key event or dividing line is the placement on the ballot, not the act of signing an unsuccessful petition. The key illustrative proof is that if the petition signature were successful and the party or party-affiliated-candidate does appear on the ballot then I get to vote however I choose, and my party affiliation is relevant only on the common date of the primary.

In this vein I have mocked the effort to raise the number of signatures required of initiative petitions, or prospective petitions. Suppose the number of signatures required were raised to 50 percent of the voters in the last gubernatorial election. Would that mean that we could dispense with the need for an election on the matter entirely and declare it passed, or does that fail to address the notion that a signor merely wanted the matter on the ballot? Heck, without any authorization from the Elections Division, and without any threat of 100,000 dollar fines or five years of jail time, anybody or group can go pay per signature to "petition," in the classic sense of the term, by getting 50 percent of the voters to sign a document that declares the SoS to be a mealy mouth prick that hates the First Amendment (I could even boast to admit to a malicious intent on this one against our current SoS).

(Write-in vote for Nader . . . suppose Nader got more that 50 percent in write-in votes, . . . would the SoS say that such votes were invalid as he, the SoS, declared that Mr. Nader could not appear on the ballot and that that must mean that Mr. Nader could not be written in either, even if the 50 percent threshold were met.)

PDXNAG.com
OregonLibery.us

Just for kicks. Suppose you sign an initiative petition for x y or z, could the legislature create a law to declare such issue-petition activity to be a complete and total substitute for participation in a regular election on measures that make it onto the ballot? Suppose the SoS topped it off by saying that if you signed an initiative petition and then voted in an election that you are subject to a 5 year penalty, at his discretion of course (otherwise called arbitrary attack with malicious intent to deny voting rights so as to aid another for their financial gain, or his own financial gain or for fund-raising efforts for his own reelection to repeat the exercise).

The Oregon constitutional provision that limits pay per signature for petitions is impermissibly overbroad for purposes of constitutional analysis (US Constitution), for it can encompasses lawful activity to obtain signatures quite outside the scope of the SoS's little realm of authority to merely accept or reject petitions as complying with some procedural requirements for placement on a ballot. One need only isolate the facts to a petition, with paid signature gatherers that are paid by the signature, to call the SoS a "mealy mouth prick that hates the First Amendment." And, if I could pay per signature for just such a petition then surely I must also have a right to merely pose that concept in a publication (or a lower circulation thing like a comment on a web log).

You folks ought not be so forgiving of genuine threats to liberty.

gullyborg,

Do you think the SoS would try and sue me for calling him names and asserting that he is acting outside the law, and should be the subject of criminal prosecution for such activity, or at least a RICO or ORICO action? I am quite within my rights to invite such a law suit to test my First Amendment rights, and I can do so by saying the state has exceeded its authority and to say that the SoS personally is exceeding his authority under the US Constitution notwithstanding anything that the legislature of the Oregon Constitution might say otherwise. For comparison go look up SLAPP and anti-SLAPP cases and then insert the state government into the seat of the bigger pig that wants to attack a lesser opponent, like a simple individual, to shut them up.