Opinion ID: 835816
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: plaintiffs' alternative arguments

Text: Plaintiffs assert in their first claim for relief that the Secretary of State, in notifying Nader that his campaign had filed insufficient signatures, failed to include with the decision any findings of fact or conclusions of law to explain the reasons for that action. Plaintiffs seek review of that notification under ORS 183.484 as an order in other than a contested case. Plaintiffs' first claim relies on a misinterpretation of an agency's responsibility in issuing an order in other than a contested case. In that context, nothing in the APA directs an agency in other than a contested case proceeding to make a record or to make findings of fact before issuing its order. Norden v. Water Resources Dept., 329 Or. 641, 647, 996 P.2d 958 (2000). Under Norden, an agency's failure to incorporate findings of fact or conclusions of law into an order in other than a contested case to explain the basis for the order is not a violation of any law. Consequently, plaintiffs' first claim for relief fails. Plaintiffs' second claim for relief asserts that the Secretary of State has no authority to refuse to recognize verified elector signatures on signature sheets that contain errors committed by circulators or the Nader campaign. However, the claim rests on the same false premise that this court rejected above in discussing plaintiffs' fourth claim for relief. For the same reasons, plaintiffs' second claim for relief is not well taken. Plaintiffs' third claim for relief challenges the Secretary of State's rejection of signature sheets that the Nader campaign submitted without sequential numbering. Plaintiffs contend, and the Secretary of State disputes, that the Nader campaign followed the instruction of elections officials in numbering submitted signature sheets. Plaintiffs argue that the Secretary of State is estopped to deny the advice that the Nader campaign received. ORS 249.009(1)(b) authorizes the Secretary of State to adopt rules that [p]rescribe a system for numbering all signature sheets of    certificates of nomination by individual electors   . The Secretary of State has exercised that authority by adopting the following rule in the SCMIE: Before submitting the signature sheets to the appropriate county elections official for signature verification, the chief sponsor must    [w]ithin each individual county, sequentially number each signature sheet in the space provided;    Lindback explained that his office rejected the signature sheets in question because the Nader campaign had failed to number the sheets before submission to county election officials in violation of the rule. As a general proposition, a governmental agency may be estopped from asserting a claim inconsistent with a previous position that it has taken. Dept. of Transportation v. Hewett Professional Group, 321 Or. 118, 126, 895 P.2d 755 (1995). However, one element required for estoppel is reasonable reliance on a governmental actor's misstatements. Reliance on a misstatement is not reasonable if the governmental actor had no authority to make the misstatement. Id. The alleged misstatement on which plaintiffs rely would have had the effect of negating the administrative rule that the Secretary of State enforced. Nothing in the record demonstrates that any person who may have advised the Nader campaign had (or indeed could have) any authority to negate a rule. Thus, any reliance on that statement, if made, was not reasonable. The third claim for relief is legally flawed for that reason. Plaintiffs' fifth, sixth, and seventh claims for relief assert various constitutional challenges, which we summarized above, to the Secretary of State's disqualification of signature sheets due to errors by circulators in signing and dating the sheets. Plaintiffs contend that a compelling justification must support the state's enforcement of any rule that results in the disqualification of the signatures of registered voters. We do not dispute that the statutory procedure for nomination by individual electors implicates important aspects of the political liberty and associational freedom of Oregon's electors. However, plaintiffs' claim that the Secretary of State's action effectively compels them to collect thousands of signatures in addition to the number required by Oregon statute or the state constitution is illusory. Plaintiffs, like all political participants, must collect only the number of signatures, and comply with the pertinent signature gathering procedures, that Oregon law requires. Thus, contrary to plaintiffs' argument, the Secretary of State has not imposed an undue burden on plaintiffs' political freedoms under the state or federal constitutions. [8] The United States Supreme Court has noted, in an analogous context, that a state (there, Colorado) retains an arsenal of safeguards to protect the integrity of a ballot-initiative process, to deter fraud, and to diminish corruption. Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., 525 U.S. 182, 204-05, 119 S.Ct. 636, 142 L.Ed.2d 599 (1999). The Court in Buckley specifically cited a state statute that invalidated an initiative if [the] circulator has violated any provision of the laws governing circulation as one example of a legitimate state safeguard. Id. at 205. The Court also noted that states have considerable leeway to protect the integrity and reliability of the initiative process, as they have with respect to election processes generally, id. at 191, citing as an example Colorado's requirement that petition circulators attach to each petition section an affidavit containing particular factual statements. We recognize, of course, that functional differences exist between the initiative process scrutinized in Buckley and the candidate nomination procedure under consideration here. But, as noted, the underlying signature collection and circulator certification procedures are analogous. For that reason, we conclude that, according to the principles discussed in Buckley, Oregon's circulator certification procedure, and the other procedures discussed above that protect the electoral process from fraud, withstand federal constitutional scrutiny. It follows from the foregoing that the Secretary of State's disqualification of signature sheets in this case is not unconstitutional for the reasons asserted by plaintiffs. Plaintiffs' only remaining claim concerns attorney fees and costs. That claim affords no alternative basis for sustaining the action of the trial court.