Continuing the Fight for the Initiative: O & C Challenges Ballot Measure 26
Continuing the Fight for the Initiative: O & C Challenges Ballot Measure 26
Lewis and Clark College Chronicle
Summer 2004
On several previous occasions in these pages I have written about what I believe to be an attack on the Oregon initiative system by the political establishment of this state, in conjunction with the courts. And over the last several years, O’Donnell & Clark has fought this trend: we represented interested parties in the Term Limits case before the Oregon Supreme Court, where the issue was the so-called single subject/multiple amendment rule handed down by the Courts through the Armatta decisions. We also filed Friend of the Court Briefs in the Ballot Measure 7 Property Rights case before the Oregon Supreme Court. We have written and spoken extensively about the tax on the initiative. You can find these articles and case histories on our website at www.oandc.com.
Recently, again on behalf of initiative activists (Don McIntire, Ted Piccolo, US Term Limits) we have launched another battle in the fight to keep the initiative strong. In late April, we challenged 2002 Ballot Measure 26, which prohibits paying initiative signature gatherers based on the number of signatures gathered. This union-backed measure was billed and sold to the people as a protection against fraud and corruption in the initiative system, but in our view it badly overswings and infringes on the constitutional right of free speech of those who would sponsor and circulate political ideas in the form of an initiative petition. Our suit claims a violation of the federal First Amendment as well as a violation of the procedural rules set down in the Armatta decisions. Our use of the Armatta line of cases in a challenge to a ballot measure designed to impair the initiative is ironic indeed.
The unions, of course, and their political supporters, want to make it more difficult for activists to place initiatives on the ballot, and they know that targeting the economic relationship between initiative sponsors and signature gatherers is the best way to cripple the process. The unions, as part of the political Establishment, loathe the initiative because they cannot control it. The Legislature they believe they can control, or at least strongly influence; they believe they have a friend in the Governor’s office; they believe they have friends in the courts. But the initiative, yielding as it does radical proposals from the Left and the Right, terrifies the political establishment. Ballot Measure 26 reflects this deep fear and distrust of the initiative process.
Stay tuned for the results of this suit. With any luck, we will have a decision from the trial court by the end of the summer and we will be up into the appellate courts. Stay tuned.