Opinion ID: 835816
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: authority of secretary of state to disqualify elector signatures due to violation of circulator signature requirements

Text: The premise for the trial court's decision was that no statute or rule expressly authorized the Secretary of State to prohibit the counting of otherwise valid signatures of electors that supported a certificate of nomination simply because of arguable violations of signature and dating requirements respecting circulators. The trial court also believed that disqualification of elector signatures was inconsistent with ORS 247.005 and with the prior policy of the Elections Division, as recited in the Court of Appeals decision in Nelson. For the following reasons, we disagree with the trial court. The legislature has acted in several ways to provide the procedures for nominating candidates by individual electors. First, the legislature has enacted ORS 249.740. Second, the legislature has adopted several statutes that delegate authority over that procedure, and other election procedures, to the Secretary of State. ORS 249.009(1), quoted above, is one example. In addition to authorizing rulemaking, the legislature has enacted ORS 246.110, which provides: The Secretary of State is the chief elections officer of this state, and it is the secretary's responsibility to obtain and maintain uniformity in the application, operation and interpretation of the election laws. The legislature also has enacted ORS 246.150, which provides: The Secretary of State may adopt rules the secretary considers necessary to facilitate and assist in achieving and maintaining a maximum degree of correctness, impartiality and efficiency in administration of the election laws. In addition to the foregoing authority, and to ensure that the Secretary of State carries out the responsibility described in ORS 246.110, the legislature has required the Secretary of State to communicate with each county clerk through written directives and other means on election procedures that are under the direction and control of the county clerk. ORS 246.120 provides: In carrying out the responsibility under ORS 246.110, the Secretary of State shall prepare and distribute to each county clerk detailed and comprehensive written directives, and shall assist, advise and instruct each county clerk, on registration of electors and election procedures which are under the direction and control of the county clerk. The directives and instructions shall include relevant sample forms of ballots, documents, records and other materials and supplies required by the election laws. A county clerk affected thereby shall comply with the directives or instructions. (Emphasis added.) As already noted, the Secretary of State exercised the rulemaking authority that ORS 249.009(1) delegates by adopting SCMIE as a rule. The record also demonstrates that the Secretary of State exercised his authority under ORS 246.120 by issuing written instructions to all county clerks regarding the verification of elector signature sheets from the Nader campaign, including directions for addressing potential problems with the signature and dating of signature sheets by circulators. [7] The written instructions to the county clerks from John W. Lindback, Director of the Elections Division for the office of Secretary of State, stated: Following are procedures we need all counties to follow when verifying the signature sheets for the Nader for President petition. 1. Counties will initially screen for potential problems with circulator signature and dating of signature sheets. 2. Counties will highlight with a highlighter the areas of concern on the signature sheet. Do not verify any signatures on the sheets that have any potential problems or issues. Once the Secretary of State's office makes a determination on these sheets, the county will be contacted and advised on whether to verify these signatures or to reject the sheet. 3. The areas to review for concern are: The circulator signature line is blank or the circulator has signed using initials only. (First name initial with the full last name is sufficient). There is no date on the circulator date signed line. Circulator date has been crossed out or modified. The circulator signed and dated before the dates of some or all of the the [sic] signers. Circulator name is a signature stamp. Circulator signature is photocopied or carbon copied. White out is used on the circulator name or date area. There are two different circulator names on the certification. The original signature of a circulator has been crossed out, and a new circulator's signature is inserted. 4. Once the counties have screened for these items the county will fax any sheets of concern to the Secretary of State Elections Division    [Elections Division officials] will make the final determination on these sheets. 5. Counties will retain and not return any signature sheets to the Nader Campaign that may have any potential problems until the Secretary of State has resolved these issues and notified the county. 6. On signature sheets that have no issues and appear to be sufficient, the counties will verify the signatures and cross through any blank signature lines on the signature sheets with a marker so that no other signers may be added to that sheet after the county has verified the sheets. 7. Counties will verify all signatures submitted only on signature sheets that do not have any issues. The county will retain a copy of all signature sheets submitted and return the original sheets with the counties certification to the Nader Campaign. (Boldface in original.) Lindback explained by affidavit the circulator signature review procedures that his office followed in inspecting the signature sheets that the county elections officials submitted. According to Lindback, state officials accepted a circulator's signature if the signature sheet bore a mark that appeared to be that person's signature. However, they engaged in further review if the purported signature was illegible or appeared to consist only of initials. That further review sought to confirm that the mark was the circulator's valid signature. To that end, state officials compared the mark on the signature sheet with the signature on the circulator's voter registration card, if applicable, or another signature exemplar. Lindback stated: It bears emphasis that our practice is to accept a purported circulator's signature if there is any reasonable way to do so. Lindback also described the procedures that his office followed to confirm compliance by circulators with the requirement that they state the date on which they certified each signature sheet. In general, state officials rejected signature sheets containing no date or alterations in the date, such as stricken material, but accepted signature sheets that the circulator had redated and re-signed or sheets that told a clear story about their completion and whose circulators apparently had completed the certification properly. The trial court determined that the signature and date review procedures that Lindback had followed in his office were unwritten rules, that they were not supported by the written administrative rules as set forth in the Manual, that they were inconsistent with ORS 247.005 and the prior policy of the Elections Division as stated in Nelson, and that they were not applied either uniformly or consistently in actual practice. It is true that the review procedures that Lindback described were not themselves written, but that does not render them unlawful. On the contrary, the review procedures are nothing more than the step-by-step process by which the Secretary of State carried out legal authority found elsewhere in statute, in rule, and in the Secretary of State's written instructions to the county clerks. The review procedures were not, as the trial court's comments appear to suggest, yet another layer of unannounced legal barriers. They were, instead, the methodology by which the Secretary of State enforced existing legal standards. Specifically, Lindback designed the review procedures as a means to carry out the Secretary of State's duty under ORS 246.110 to obtain and maintain uniformity in the application, operation and interpretation of the election laws. The necessity for the review procedures arose in this case because the Secretary of State gave written instructions to the county clerks to return to the Secretary of State for further review all signature sheets that have any potential problems or issues, and gave them a list of those potential problems. The review procedures that Lindback described did not enlarge upon the written list; rather, they merely effectuated it with the goal of insuring that review by his office was a uniform process. The trial court's concern in this respect was not well taken. The trial court's criticism that the Secretary of State's review procedures were not supported by the written administrative rules as set forth in the [SCMIE] appears also to reflect a concern that the SCMIE provides that a signature sheet format violation will result in the rejection of those sheets, but does not similarly warn of potential rejection of signature sheets for other errors, such as in the signature and dating of sheets by circulators. Relatedly, the trial court noted that the SCMIE warns that violation of the circulator certification requirements may result in conviction of a felony with a significant fine and imprisonment, but gives no notice that a violation of those requirements will lead to a disqualification of the elector signatures. Those concerns of the trial judge also are not well taken. In practical terms, the trial court construed the SCMIE not to permit the sanction of disqualification of elector signatures due to circulator certification errors, because, although the SCMIE mentioned other potential sanctions, it did not mention that particular sanction under these particular circumstances. But, when we consider the circulator certification rules in context, their silence about the possible effect of a violation on the validity of elector signatures is just thatsilence. The notice in the rule that certain criminal consequences may result from a violation is a pointed warning to circulators, not an assurance to electors who sign the signature sheet that their signatures will count despite the circulator's improper certification. It is important to remember that ORS 249.740(4) requires each circulator to certify on each signature sheet that the signer had signed the sheet in the circulator's presence and that the circulator believed that the signer was an elector registered in the electoral district. The term certify means to attest esp. authoritatively or formally    to present in formal communication, esp. in a document under hand or seal   . Webster's Third New Int'l Dictionary 367 (unabridged ed. 1993). In keeping with the legislature's requirement of a formal attestation, SCMIE requires the circulator to sign the signature sheet, and the Secretary of State's written instructions call for the use of a signature. A signature is the name of a person written with his own hand to signify that the writing which precedes accords with his wishes or intentions. Id. at 2116. Thus, for example, the Secretary of State logically could disqualify a mark that consisted of mere initials, because the mark fails to display the required signature. See Don't Waste Oregon Com. v. Energy Facility Siting, 320 Or. 132, 142, 881 P.2d 119 (1994) (sustaining agency's plausible interpretation of its own rule). In adopting the rules set out in the SCMIE, in issuing written instructions to the county clerks, and in utilizing the circulator signature and date review procedures, the Secretary of State was obtaining and maintaining uniformity in the operation of an election law, i.e., the certification requirement in ORS 249.740(4), as ORS 246.110 required. The Secretary of State thus may conclude, and clearly has so concluded, that a circulator's failure to comply with the Secretary of State's requirements for circulator certification means that the purported certification is invalid and the signature sheet does not comply with ORS 249.740(4). The trial court opined that there was no valid policy reason to enforce the circulator certification requirement by disqualifying the signature of an elector if the county clerk had been able to verify that the electors' signatures on the disqualified sheets were genuine. That overlooks the requirement in ORS 249.740(4) that the circulator must certify that the individual signed the sheet in the presence of the circulator. The bare presence of an elector's signature on a sheet is not enough to show compliance with that requirement. The certification requirement serves to discourage fraud in the execution of signature sheets. The Secretary of State's choice to invalidate a signature sheet if the circulator violates the certification requirement promotes that objective. The trial court's concerns in this respect were not legally justified. We next note that the trial court's reliance on ORS 247.005 was misplaced. That statute is the legislature's statement of state policy to assist electors in the exercise of the franchise. It does not purport to invalidate rules and procedures that the Secretary of State lawfully adopts pursuant to statutory command or delegated authority. Were the rule otherwise, virtually any election law or rule would be vulnerable to invalidation under ORS 247.005. We decline to accord that intention to the legislature. The trial court's reliance on Nelson, 155 Or.App. 388, 964 P.2d 284, also was misplaced. In Nelson, the Court of Appeals determined that a civil penalty of a $250 fine was the exclusive remedy for violation of an election statute, ORS 260.560, and that the legislature did not authorize the invalidation of signatures as an additional remedy. The court stated: Neither ORS 260.560 nor OAR XXX-XXX-XXXX spells out the consequence for violating the requirement that petition circulators be Oregon registered voters. ORS 260.995, however, provides that the Secretary or the Attorney General may impose a civil penalty not to exceed $250 `for each violation of any provision of Oregon Revised Statutes relating to the conduct of any election, any rule adopted by the Secretary of State under ORS chapters 246 to 260 or any other matter preliminary to or relating to an election, for which no penalty is otherwise provided.' There is no question that the civil penalty provision applies to violations of ORS 260.560 and OAR XXX-XXX-XXXX (1996). The question is whether that remedy is the exclusive remedy for violations of the statute and the rule. Certainly, nothing in the language of the statute suggests any legislative intention to make the civil fine cumulative of other remedies such as the invalidation of signatures. The legislature expressly has provided for invalidation of signatures upon violation of other statutes. See, e.g., ORS 249.008(1) (`No signature in violation of the provisions of this chapter shall be counted.'); ORS 249.865(5) (`[a]ny intentional or willful violation [of the statute] shall invalidate the prospective petition'); ORS 250.105(2) (the Secretary shall not accept initiative or referendum petition if fewer than required number of signatures are submitted). The failure of the legislature to include similar language in its description of the consequences of violating ORS 260.560 strongly suggests that it did not intend invalidation of signatures to be a remedy for violating that statute. Id. at 393-94, 964 P.2d 284. The trial court read Nelson to suggest that the legislature's decision not to state expressly in ORS 249.740(4) or elsewhere that a violation of circulator certification requirements would lead to the invalidation of signatures, as the legislature had so stated in ORS 249.008(1), meant that the legislature did not intend to authorize that remedy. Even if Nelson correctly construed the contrast in the statutory texts that it considered  an issue that we need not decide here  that case is distinguishable. As we have explained elsewhere, the Secretary of State has determined, in the lawful exercise of delegated authority, that a circulator's violation of certification requirements deprives the affected signature sheet of the certification that ORS 249.740(4) requires. The Secretary of State's determination advances the legislature's objective of deterring fraud in the nomination process. Nelson did not address the legal effect of the Secretary of State's delegated authority to reach that determination and to adopt rules and procedures to deter fraud in the election system. Finally, the trial court noted that some counties did not comply with the Secretary of State's written instruction to scrutinize signature sheets for circulator certification problems. After those counties submitted their sheets of verified elector signatures, the Secretary of State's staff examined the signature sheets for the circulator certification problems that the counties had neglected to investigate. If the staff determined that the circulator certifications violated the Secretary of State's requirements, then staff did not count the elector signatures on the affected signature sheets. The trial court determined that [t]here appears to be no statutory or administrative rule authority for that novel action by the Secretary at the post-verification stage and that that action violated ORS 247.005. The trial court acknowledged that Lindback had sought to justify that action by citing the Secretary of State's responsibility, expressed in ORS 246.110, to obtain and maintain uniformity in the application, operation and interpretation of the election laws. We agree with Lindback's explanation. The noncompliance by several counties with the Secretary of State's written instructions, issued under the Secretary of State's express authority in ORS 246.120, threatened a violation of the uniform application of the Secretary of State's requirements for circulator certification. See ORS 246.120 (A county clerk affected thereby shall comply with the [Secretary of State's] directives and instructions.) Faced with that potential violation of uniformity, the Secretary of State's choice to engage in a post-verification review of signature sheets from noncomplying counties was a permissible one. And, for the reasons already stated, the policy statement in ORS 247.005 does not undermine the Secretary of State's authority under ORS 246.110 to make that choice. In light of the foregoing, we conclude, that the trial court impermissibly sustained plaintiff's fourth claim for relief. Plaintiffs argue, however, that the court should not grant a writ of mandamus because each of their other claims for relief would warrant the same injunctive relief that the trial court granted. Plaintiffs assert that the record demonstrates, as a matter of law, that plaintiffs are entitled to the same relief under each of those claims. We have considered plaintiffs' alternative theories, because, if one or more were correct, it would obviate the necessity of relief in mandamus. Plaintiffs correctly identify their burden at this point respecting their other claims for relief. ORS 18.082(3) provides: Upon entry of a general judgment, any claim in the action that is not decided by the general judgment or by a previous limited judgment, that has not been incorporated into the general judgment under subsection (2) of this section, or that cannot be decided by a supplemental judgment, is dismissed with prejudice unless the judgment provides that the dismissal is without prejudice. Under that statute, the trial court's general judgment dismissed with prejudice all claims for relief except the fourth claim for relief that the court expressly sustained. Consequently, plaintiffs can prevail on their alternative arguments only if there is no evidence in the record to support the dismissal with prejudice of the remaining claims. We turn now to those claims.