Skip to main contentThe Nose is confused.
That fact by itself is hardly notable. After all, the Nose spends much of his life in a state of bemused bewilderment. His current confusion, however, is more troubling than the usual fog created when the Nose encounters something like the newfangled downtown parking meters.
This Nose is baffled because Oregon's beloved initiative system has been proven to be a fraud, and yet our elected leaders, including Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, have responded with a collective shrug.
Any doubt that direct democracy in Oregon has become a farce was removed Monday when a Marion County judge ruled that Bill Sizemore's Measure 18, which qualified by a mere 125 signature margin, can go on the November ballot. It can go, he ruled, even though hundreds of the people whose signatures appear on qualifying petitions never put pen to paper.
We know this because a group called the Voter Education Project sent out postcards to 20,000 of the 137,000 people whose names and addresses appeared. Most of the cards came back stamped "return to sender--bad address." Now, it's possible that all those folks moved between the time they signed the petition and the time VEP's postcard arrived. There's also a chance that some of them didn't actually sign the petition. That possibility seems particularly plausible given VEP's hearing from nearly 300 people who claimed they didn't sign the petition.
Most of the signatures in question come from six hired circulators who get a bounty from Sizemore for every John and Jane Hancock they turn in. The VEP asked the judge to prevent Bradbury, the state's top elections official, from counting any of the 34,500 signatures turned in by this suspicious sextet until they could be further scrutinized.
The judge didn't dispute that a good chunk of Measure 18's signatures are fraudulent. But he said he couldn't prove that the guys who gathered the signatures forged them. It's conceivable, after all, that hundreds of people are going around the state getting their ya-yas by signing other people's names to initiative petitions. And so, despite the VEP's protests, Measure 18 is headed for the ballot.
Now, the Nose knows exactly what's going on here. The Voter Education Project isn't a bunch of little old ladies who ask city council candidates to come debate the finer points of the commission form of government over tea and scones. No, this group is out for blood.
Bankrolled by the state's public-employee unions, VEP has one purpose--to knock Sizemore's measures off the ballot. The group has spent countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars spying on signature gatherers who work for Sizemore, videotaping their sales pitches and interviewing people who've signed Measure 18, which would make it harder for unions to deduct dues from government workers' paychecks.
The Nose is a bit troubled that such a partisan outfit is behind the investigation of petition fraud. He would prefer that the dirt had been dug up by KGW's Eric Mason, the League of Women Voters or (hey--here's an idea!) the state elections office.
Bradbury, you might think, would take an interest in the VEP's findings. But as Bradbury travels the state, running for the U.S. Senate, he's been remarkably quiet on the topic of petition fraud. When pressed on the subject this past spring, the Democrat blamed the GOP Legislature for not adequately funding his office.
Certainly, the Nose isn't in the position of telling federal elected officials what they should do. But if he were advising Bradbury's opponent, U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, he'd tell the Republican incumbent that this is a case where good policy makes good politics.
The Nose, for one, wouldn't be at all confused if someone were to step up with a plan to end signature fraud. In fact, he might view that as leadership.
WWeek 2015