Opinion ID: 3036329
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Oregon’s “Important Regulatory Interest”

Text: Defendant has an important regulatory interest in preventing fraud and its appearances in its electoral processes. See Bayless, 320 F.3d at 1013; see also Timmons, 520 U.S. at 364 argued that a restriction on the initiative process itself, which is a means to wrest power from the legislature, is inherently content-based. This argument must fail because in Oregon the initiative power may be used to amend the constitution to grant additional power to the legislature. See Or. Const. Art. IV § 1. See also Stranahan v. Fred Meyer Inc., 11 P.3d 228, 242 (Or. 2000) (“In sum, the case law demonstrates that Article IV, section 1, confers an unfettered right to propose laws and constitutional amendments by initiative petition, and to approve or reject such proposed laws or amendments through the voting process.”); Bernstein Bros. Inc. v. Dept. of Revenue, 661 P.2d 537, 539 (Or. 1983) (“The power to invoke a referendum is a constitutional power reserved by the people. The creation of the referendum power (along with the initiative power) changes the allocation of legislative power within a state, because after this creation the legislative power is shared between the people and their representatives.”); Zilesch et al. v. Polk County et al., 215 P. 578, 582 (Or. 1923) (“[T]he legislature and the people, through the initiative or referendum, [are] coordinate legislative bodies, and [ ] either [may] independently repeal an act passed by the other . . . .”). 25 Plaintiffs alternatively contend that Measure 26 is subject to strict scrutiny because it is content-based, in that it applies only to initiative and referendum petitions, not to recall or candidate sponsorship petitions. See Bayless, 320 F.3d at 1009 (noting strict scrutiny automatically applies to content-based restrictions). The district court rejected this argument, noting “the content of an initiative petition itself is not restricted, regulated or otherwise affected by Measure 26.” We agree with the district court. “The ‘principal inquiry’ in determining whether a regulation is contentneutral or content-based ‘is whether the government has adopted the regulation because of agreement or disagreement with the message it conveys.’ ” Crawford, 96 F.3d at 384 (quoting Turner Broadcasting Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 642 (1994)) (internal alterations omitted). “[L]aws that by their terms distinguish favored speech from disfavored speech on the basis of the ideas or views expressed are content-based.” Id. Measure 26 does not regulate what can be said in an initiative or referendum petition, nor does it adopt or reject any particular subject that can be raised in a petition. Therefore, Measure 26 is not a content-based restriction and strict scrutiny does not apply. 1894 PRETE v. BRADBURY (“States certainly have an interest in protecting the integrity, fairness, and efficiency of their ballots and election processes as means for electing public officials.”). Further, the record supports the conclusion that Measure 26 is aimed at combating actual instances of fraud and forgery committed by petition circulators paid on the basis of the number of signatures gathered. First, the voter pamphlet circulated to the voters in consideration of Measure 26 supports the conclusion that Measure 26 is aimed at combating fraud in the signature gathering process. See Ecumenical Ministries v. Oregon State Lottery Comm’n, 871 P.2d 106, 111 n.8 (Or. 1994) (“In considering the history of a constitutional provision adopted through the initiative process, [Oregon courts] examine[ ], as legislative facts, other sources of information that were available to the voters at the time the measure was adopted and that disclose the public’s understanding of the measure . . . [such as] the ballot title and arguments for and against the measure included in the voters’ pamphlet . . . .”). The voter pamphlet states in support of Measure 26 that “[t]his most recent election cycle saw convictions [of paid petition circulators] on a variety of forgery, fraud, and identity theft counts, charges pending against others and allegations of dozens more.” Measure 26 would combat such fraud, the pamphlet states, by removing the “incentive for fraud out of the system” by mandating hourly pay rather than per signature. As evidence of the actual existence of fraud and forgery in the initiative process, defendant presented an affidavit from Bill Carroll, a criminal investigator in the Oregon Department of Justice. He averred that paying petition circulators per signature leads to two types of fraud. First, the signature gatherers often forge signatures, thus receiving payment for a collected signature even though the signature is invalid. Second, the signature gatherers falsely certify the petition signature sheets,26 either for petitions submitted by themselves or for other petition circulators. 26 Petition circulators must certify that the signatures on the petitions were obtained in the presence of the circulator and that upon belief, each PRETE v. BRADBURY 1895 As attachments to his affidavit, Carroll supplied reports of interviews of various signature gatherers (paid per signature) who had forged signatures on their petitions; purchased signature sheets filled with signatures, then submitted them with their petitions as if they had collected the signatures themselves;27 or participated in “signature parties” in which multiple petition circulators would gather and sign each others’ petitions.28 Defendant also submitted an affidavit by John Lindback, Director of Oregon Secretary of State’s Elections Division. He averred “the practice of paying signature gatherers by the signature is a substantial case of . . . fraud” and forgery in the initiative process. Plaintiffs point to the Arno and Taylor affidavits, however, which aver that signature gatherers would not engage in fraud or forgery because signature gatherers are “selling” each signature to APC, and APC won’t “buy” a signature APC deems questionable. In that respect, signature gatherers paid by the signature police themselves because professional signature gatherers don’t want a reputation that would cause them to not be hired by APC in the future, or not be hired by other signature gathering companies. signature is that of a registered Oregon voter. Or. Rev. St. § 250.045(7). It is unlawful to make a false certification. Or. Rev. St. § 260.715(1). 27 Or. Rev. St. § 260.558(2) makes it unlawful “to sell, offer to sell, purchase or offer to purchase, for money or other valuable consideration, any signature sheet of an initiative, referendum or recall petition or any other portion of the petition used to gather signatures.” 28 Or. Rev. St. § 260.555(3)-(4) makes it unlawful to obtain a signature on an initiative “knowing that the person signing the petition is not qualified to sign it”; or that the person has already signed the petition once. 1896 PRETE v. BRADBURY Although such a general proposition may be sound, it does not controvert defendant’s evidence discussed above that some signature gatherers paid per signature have engaged in fraud and forgery, nor does it diminish defendant’s important regulatory interest in preventing such fraud.29 29 Plaintiffs also rely on four district court cases. Those cases are distinguishable, however, because in each case the state defending the prohibition on per-signature payment for petition circulators failed to present any evidence that per-signature payments increased fraud. Hence, in those cases, the states presented no evidence to support their assertions that a per-signature ban was necessary to promote the state interest in preventing fraud and forgery in the initiative process. See Idaho Coalition United for Bears v. Cenarrusa, 234 F. Supp. 2d 1159, 1165-66 (D. Idaho 2001) (the plaintiffs challenged an Idaho prohibition making it a felony to “offer . . . or attempt to sell . . . any petition or any part thereof or of any signatures” for initiative petitions; the district court granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs; construing the prohibition to prohibit payment of petition circulators per signature, the court found Idaho presented no evidence of fraud in the signature gathering process and thus struck down the prohibition as violating the First Amendment); On Our Terms ’97 PAC v. Sec’y of State of Maine, 101 F. Supp. 2d 19, 25-26 (D. Me. 1999) (the plaintiffs challenged Maine’s prohibition on paying petition circulators per signature; following a bench trial, the district court ruled for the plaintiffs, finding the prohibition burdened the signature gathering process but noting that Maine provided “no evidence whatsoever that fraud is more pervasive among circulators paid per signature, or even that fraud in general has been a noteworthy problem in the lengthy history of the Maine initiative and referendum process.”); Terms Limits Leadership Council, Inc. v. Clark, 984 F. Supp. 470, 471 (S.D. Miss. 1997) (the plaintiffs challenged a Mississippi prohibition on paying petition circulators per signature; the district court granted summary judgment for plaintiffs, finding “plaintiffs have shown that the[ ] statute[ ] burden[s] their right to political expression, [and] the State has failed to present evidence of fraud or actual threat to its citizens’ confidence in government on account of the per-signature payment of petition circulators.”); LIMIT v. Maleng, 874 F. Supp. 1138, 1140-41 (W.D. Wash. 1994) (the plaintiffs challenged Washington’s prohibition on paying petition circulators on a per signature basis; the district court granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs, finding Washington presented “no actual proof of fraud stemming specifically from the payment per signature method of collection,” and thus Washington’s unsupported interest in maintaining the integrity of the initiative process did not outweigh the burdens imposed by the prohibition). Here, we have the affidavits of Carroll and Lindback, infra p. 1894-95. PRETE v. BRADBURY 1897 [14] Like Jaeger, defendant asserted an important regulatory interest in preventing fraud and forgery in the initiative process. Defendant supported that interest with evidence that signature gatherers paid per signature actually engage in such fraud and forgery. This court’s duty is not to determine whether the state’s chosen method for prevention of fraud is the best imaginable. Once the burden is found to be of the “lesser” variety, our inquiry is limited to whether the chosen method is reasonably related to the important regulatory interest. Last, as the district court correctly determined, plaintiffs did not prove Measure 26 would otherwise burden their ability to collect signatures. See Jaeger, 241 F.3d at 618. [15] In sum, because plaintiffs failed to prove the district court erred in determining that Measure 26 does not severely burden their First Amendment rights in circulating initiative petitions, and defendant has established that Measure 26 serves the important regulatory interest in preventing fraud and forgery in the initiative process, we hold that Measure 26 does not violate the First Amendment, as applied, and AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. AFFIRMED.