Skip to main content
The chief petitioners behind a ballot initiative that would have diverted 25% of the Portland Clean Energy Fund to hiring police officers filed a federal suit against city, county and state elections officials Thursday.
Earlier this month, the initiative petition failed to qualify for the November ballot after city and Multnomah County elections officials deemed petitioners had not collected enough valid signatures. County officials said just 34,130 of the submitted signatures were valid, short of the 40,437 threshold needed to qualify. Petitioners at that time pledged to file suit.
In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for Oregon, the plaintiffs argue that city and county elections officials improperly rejected entire signature sheets. The plaintiffs are asking a judge to order a new, independent review of all gathered signatures in time for the petition to make it on the November ballot if the new review determines enough signatures were valid.
“Instead of having a fair and transparent process, Defendants disenfranchised thousands of voters through an arbitrary and standardless one,” the complaint alleges. Abhishek Kambli, an attorney for the petitioners, said in a Thursday statement. “We are seeking a fair, accurate and independent review and count of signatures, not a guaranteed outcome.”
The chief petitioners, Bob Simril and Juanita Smartwood, are joined as plaintiffs in the suit by Alan Comnes, a volunteer canvasser for the suit, and John Hollister, “who voluntarily and enthusiastically signed the Petition while registered to vote in Portland.”
The lawsuit argues that City Auditor Simone Rede and her agents threw out hundreds of signature sheets for the petition—and the thousands of voter signatures on those sheets—using an “arbitrary conclusion” that circulators had mismatched signatures or overwritten dates. The complaint also alleges that Rede rejected the petitioners’ attempts to demonstrate that the sheets had in fact been validly signed.
Deborah Scroggins, the city’s Elections Division manager and another named defendant in the suit, has previously said that “over 70% of rejected signatures were from signers who were not registered voters or did not live in Portland.” The complaint alleges that “dozens” of rejected signatories were in fact properly registered.
The complaint also alleges that Tim Scott, Multnomah County’s elections director, and his agents improperly threw out additional signature sheets based on signature mismatches or signatories not being registered to vote in Portland. Scott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The plaintiffs have also named Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read as a defendant for failing to prevent voters’ alleged disenfranchisement despite raising concerns about the signature validation process in a late July letter to Rede. The plaintiffs’ Thursday press release said Read has been included as a defendant in part because they believe the state could play a role in a potential “neutral” recount. (Secretary of State spokesperson Connor Radnovich says Read has no statement on the suit at this time.)
The initiative campaign, Safer Portland, which submitted more than 63,000 signatures to elections officials, was riddled with accusations of misconduct by its canvassers. (Thursday’s complaint states that Fieldworks, the company hired by Safer Portland to run the petition’s canvassing, “employed extensive quality-control measures.”)
City and county elections officials ultimately verified only 34,130 signatures, 6,000 short of the 40,437 required to make the November ballot. At that time, the city’s Elections Division released a detailed press release explaining how the sheets had been rejected. Scroggins declined to provide further comment on pending litigation, but pointed to the evidence her office has already publicly released about why the petition was rejected.
