Court Opinion

ID: 9503393
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:44:29.43877+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:26.415529
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I write separately, because I do not agree with all the majority’s reasoning and conclusions. Specifically, the majority misconstrues ORS 246.910(1) in concluding that the trial court had no jurisdiction under that statute to consider the claims of the individual plaintiffs Audrey McCall, Hector MacPherson, and Michael E. Swaim in the McCall case, and Vera Katz and Bev Stein in the League of Oregon Cities case (hereinafter referred to collectively as “individual plaintiffs”). For the reasons set out below, ORS 246.910(1) supports the trial court’s assumption of jurisdiction over the individual plaintiffs’ claims.
OVERVIEW OF APPEAL REMEDY PROVIDED BY ORS 246.910
ORS 246.910 provides:
“(1) A person adversely affected by any act or failure to act by the Secretary of State, a county clerk, a city elections officer or any other county, city or district official under any election law, or by any order, rule, directive or instruction made by the Secretary of State, a county clerk, a city elections officer or any other county, city or district official under any election law, may appeal therefrom to the circuit court for the county in which the act or failure to act occurred or in which the order, rule, directive or instruction was made.
“(2) Any party to the appeal proceedings in the circuit court under subsection (1) of this section may appeal from the decision of the circuit court to the Court of Appeals.
“(3) The circuit courts and Court of Appeals, in their discretion, may give such precedence on their dockets to *678appeals under this section as the circumstances may require.
“(4) The remedy provided in this section is cumulative and does not exclude any other remedy against any act or failure to act by the Secretary of State, a county clerk, a city elections officer or any other county, city or district official under any election law or against any order, rule, directive or instruction made by the Secretary of State, a county clerk, a city elections officer or any other county, city or district official under any election law.”
That statute provides a nonexclusive remedy, in the form of an appeal to the circuit court, for virtually any conduct by the Secretary of State, and an array of local election officials, that falls short of the requirements of Oregon election law or any official decision relating to elections made pursuant to delegated authority.
Subsection (1) of the statute identifies two broad categories of conduct by election officials that an appeal may challenge. The first category is “any act or failure to act by the Secretary of State, a county clerk, a city elections officer or any other county, city or district official under any election law * * The second category is “any order, rule, directive or instruction made by the Secretary of State, a county clerk, a city elections officer or any other county, city or district official under any election law * *
Subsection (1) provides that, to bring an appeal, a plaintiff must be “adversely affected by” conduct that falls into either one or both of the categories described above. In this proceeding, all individual plaintiffs allege that they are either “registered voters” or “electors.” Therefore, in challenging the Secretary of State’s conduct in advancing Measure 7 to a public vote and in canvassing the ballots after the election on November 7,2000, the individual plaintiffs satisfy the criterion that, the majority agrees, confers standing to sue under ORS 246.910(1). 334 Or at 654-55 n 9 (citing Ellis v. Roberts, 302 Or 6, 10-11, 725 P2d 886 (1986)). I discuss the individual plaintiffs’ claims and the correct legal interpretation of the statute in greater detail later in this opinion.
*679The appeal that ORS 246.910(1) provides is a significant remedy. By filing an appeal under that statute, a registered voter can focus prompt judicial scrutiny on the conduct of election officials to make certain that every action or inaction of those officials complies in all respects with the requirements of Oregon election law.
THE CHALLENGED CONDUCT OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE
The issue is whether the individual plaintiffs’ complaints state facts that constitute a claim within the circuit court’s jurisdiction under ORS 246.910(1). The majority acknowledges that the allegations in the McCall complaint refer to four acts by the Secretary of State that contravene Oregon election law: (1) accepting the proposed petition; (2) verifying that the petition contained the requisite number of signatures; (3) certifying the measure for placement on the ballot; and (4) after the election, deciding to canvas and beginning to canvass the votes for and against Measure 7. Id. at 654. The allegations in the League of Oregon Cities complaint substantively are identical.1
The majority does not address the court’s jurisdiction under ORS 246.910(1) over the four acts, or failures to act, by the Secretary of State that the complaints allege. Instead, at the state’s suggestion, the majority adopts a reformation of the complaints that leaves the allegations in a state that the individual plaintiffs scarcely would recognize. For example, the majority states that, “McCall plaintiffs agree that the Secretary of State’s constitutional evaluation *680of the proposed initiative petition that became Measure 7 is the ‘act’ at the heart of this challenge.” Id. at 655.
The record contains no genuine agreement by the individual plaintiffs to abandon reliance on three of the four factual allegations on which they base their actions. When fairly read, the complaints contend that each of the Secretary of State’s four alleged acts or failures to act, from the earliest to the most recent, contravenes Oregon election law because, among other things, Measure 7 improperly presented multiple constitutional changes to the voters but packaged them for a single vote. The individual plaintiffs did not waive their complaints about the Secretary of State’s more recent actions — including the canvassing of the votes on Measure 7 after the election — merely because they also argued that the Secretary of State never should have accepted the proposed petition in the first place. In my view, the majority errs in determining jurisdiction under ORS 246.910(1) by considering only one of the Secretary of State’s alleged acts or failures to act in violation of Oregon election law.
After effectively reforming the complaints and concluding that, in reality, they challenge only the Secretary of State’s April 1999 initial evaluation of the proposed initiative, the majority concludes, under Ellis, that the individual plaintiffs’ opportunity to challenge that act under ORS 246.910(1) expired in June 1999. What the majority omits from its analysis is a consideration of the text and context of ORS 246.910. The sole case on which the majority relies, Ellis, similarly failed to construe and apply ORS 246.910. As the following discussion demonstrates, unless this court is willing to enforce the legislature’s appeal remedy under ORS 246.910 as the legislature intended, the public will suffer the loss of an important protection against unauthorized conduct by elections officials.
DETERMINING THE MEANING OF ORS 246.910
The question whether ORS 246.910 authorized the trial court to assume jurisdiction over the individual plaintiffs’ complaints requires this court to determine the intention of the legislature. In making that inquiry, this court first examines the text and context of the relevant statute. Context includes the provisions of other related statutes and case *681law that construes the meaning of the statute at issue. If those sources disclose the clear meaning of the statute in question, this court proceeds no further. State v. Toevs, 327 Or 525, 532, 964 P2d 1007 (1998).
ORS 246.910(1) begins with the phrase “[a] person adversely affected * * *.” That phrase describes those persons with standing to seek the statutory appeal remedy, and, as we already have seen, it includes persons, including the individual plaintiffs, who are registered voters or electors. Ellis, 302 Or at 11. Neither the majority nor any party questions that proposition.
ORS 246.910(1) then describes the two categories of conduct that an adversely affected person may appeal. As pertinent to this case, the categories are (1) “any act or failure to act by the Secretary of State * * * under any election law” and (2) “any order, rule, directive or instruction made by the Secretary of State * * * under any election law * * *.”
The word “any” appears four times in subsection (1). The ordinary meaning of that word is “one indifferently out of more than two : * * * one, no matter what one : EVERY * * * : ALL * * *.” Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary 97 (unabridged ed 1993).
Applying those definitions in this context, the scope of the first category of appealable conduct in subsection (1) is broad to the point of being without limit. The phrase “any act or failure to act” embraces every “thing done,” “deed,” or “decision,” id. at 20 (defining “act”), as well as every “omission of performance of an action or task; * * * neglect of an assigned, expected, or appropriate action * * * FAILING, LAPSE * * * DEFICIENCY * * *.” Id. at 815 (defining “failure”). The phrase “any act or failure to act” sweeps within its scope each of the four acts or failures to act by the Secretary of State, described above, that the individual plaintiffs allege as the basis of their complaint.
The second category of appealable conduct in subsection (1) includes any “order” or “rule,” two kinds of legal action that the legislature has exposed to judicial review under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), ORS 183.310 to 183.550. See ORS 183.400 (providing for judicial *682determination of validity of administrative rule); ORS 183.480-183.490 (providing for judicial review of administrative orders). However, the appeal remedy under ORS 246.910(1) is broader in scope than judicial review under the APA. For example, the definition of “rule” in ORS 183.310(8) includes an agency “directive” if it is “of general applicability*’ and “implements, interprets or prescribes law or policy, or describes the procedure or practice requirements of any agency [,]” but excludes certain “internal management directives” that “do not substantially affect the interests of the public” in relations between or within agencies. The remedy in ORS 246.910(1) extends to any “directive,” as well as any “instruction” of the Secretary of State under any election law. Moreover, the fact that the APA exposes “orders” and certain “rules” to judicial review does not diminish the remedy of appeal described in ORS 246.910(1), because ORS 246.910(4) provides that the remedy of appeal is “cumulative” of any other remedy. This court drove home that point in OEA v. Roberts, 301 Or 236, 721 P2d 837 (1986), in which this court held that, because the Secretary of State’s conduct in approving a proposed initiative for circulation was reviewable under ORS 246.910, the question whether ORS 183.482 also afforded judicial review of the same decision was moot.
The foregoing discussion indicates that the text of ORS 246.910(1) clearly supports the view that the legislature authorized the circuit court to review every official action by the Secretary of State regarding Measure 7. Thus, according to the statutory text, every exercise of the Secretary of State’s official power over Measure 7 is subject to judicial review for conformity with Oregon election laws, including those that establish the scope of the Secretary of State’s delegated authority over initiative petitions. Because that statute exposes every act or failure to act to a statutory appeal, it is unavailing to contend that a party’s challenge to a recent exercise of the Secretary of State’s authority, such as the canvassing of ballots, also could have been filed against some earlier exercise of authority over the same initiative petition.
This court’s case law construing ORS 246.910(1) confirms the legislature’s intention to authorize the circuit court to consider challenges to all actions or failures to act by the Secretary of State under any election law. In OEA v. Roberts, *683301 Or 228, 721 P2d 833 (1986), the plaintiffs brought an action under ORS 246.910 to compel the Secretary of State and the Attorney General not to process a proposed initiative petition and to prevent the sponsors from circulating it. The plaintiffs contended that the Secretary of State had a duty to determine before the election whether the proposed initiative complied with the “one-subject” rule stated in Article IV, section l(2)(d), of the Oregon Constitution. Id. at 230. The Secretary of State argued that that duty arose only after the election and that she had no duty, before the voters adopted an initiative measure, to examine a proposed initiative for compliance with the one-subject provision. The court had left that question open in an earlier case, State ex rel Fidanque v. Paulus, 297 Or 711, 688 P2d 1303 (1984).
The court determined that the Secretary of State did have a duty, before an election, to determine whether a proposed initiative addressed only one subject. The court also reviewed the various decisions that the Secretary of State must make on a proposed initiative in the months leading up to an election and stated: “The submission process thus contains several discrete decisions by the Secretary, any one of which may be challenged.” OEA, 301 Or at 234 (emphasis added). See also State ex rel Fidanque, 297 Or at 716 n 5 (“Therefore, in the submission process, a series of decisions must be made. As each decision is made, it becomes susceptible to challenge.”).
The court then turned to the question whether the particular decision that the plaintiffs had challenged — the approval of the prospective petition for circulation — was a proper occasion for a challenge under the one-subject rule. The court agreed with the plaintiffs that a one-subject challenge at that stage was proper because
“ Tilt is this determination that provides the first opportunity for the Secretary of State to exercise her official power with respect to the prospective petition. If, as the Plaintiffs-Relators contend, there is a constitutional duty to act, it would arise at this time. It is in approving a prospective petition which did not comply with the alleged requirements of Article IV, section 1, that the Secretary of State’s authority under the constitution and statutes first would be exceeded and her duty breached.’ ”
*684OEA, 301 Or at 234 (quoting State ex rel Fidanque, 297 Or at 715).
The court’s determination in OEA — that the Secretary of State’s approval of a prospective petition was her first action in arguable violation of her powers — confirmed that the plaintiffs, in contesting that action, had not brought their challenge prematurely, as the defendants contended. The defendants’ argument — that the plaintiffs should have brought their claim only after enactment of the measure— was unresponsive to the question whether the Secretary of State’s responsibility to apply the one-subject rule arose before the election. The plaintiffs’ choice to contest the first exercise of the Secretary of State’s authority over the proposed initiative was correct procedurally, because, as the court stated, that decision was the first of “several discrete decisions” by the Secretary of State in the submission process, “any one of which may be challenged.” Id.
The individual plaintiffs similarly argue that the Oregon Constitution does not authorize the actions and certifications that the Secretary of State has employed to advance Measure 7 to a vote and to canvass the votes after the election because they contend, among other things, that Measure 7 unlawfully makes multiple amendments to the constitution. The majority responds that Ellis declined to consider a similar form-of-adoption challenge to a pre-election certification of an initiative petition. The majority reasons that, because Ellis announced a 60-day deadline for challenging the Secretary of State’s approval of a proposed initiative, and measured the deadline from certification of the ballot title, the Ellis deadline expired in this case in June 1999. Because that theory would restrict significantly the appeal remedy in ORS 246.910(1), I examine Ellis in detail.

ELLIS v. ROBERTS

Ellis was a challenge under ORS 246.910(1) by registered voters to the Secretary of State’s certification on July 16,1986, of Ballot Measure 11 (1986) for the November 1986, ballot. The plaintiffs commenced their appeal under ORS 246.910(1) on July 31,1986, and argued that the Secretary of *685State’s certification was unauthorized because Measure 11 contained more than one subject. Measure 11 purported to create a homestead exemption from property taxes and also prohibited the legislature from referring a sales tax to the people for a vote. The trial court dismissed the action on a theory of laches. Ellis, 302 Or at 10-11.
On review, this court determined that the plaintiffs satisfied the requirement in ORS 246.910(1) that they be “adversely affected” because they were registered voters and the statute permitted any registered voter to file an action. Id. at 11. The court also determined that the doctrine of laches had no application to an action under ORS 246.910(1). Id. at 12. The court distinguished the plaintiffs’ statutory action from an earlier case, Fidanque, a mandamus proceeding in which laches was a pertinent defense. Neither of those determinations in Ellis is in controversy in this case.
The Ellis opinion then did an odd thing. The court asked itself the following question: “Should actions like the present one be subject to some kind of‘reasonable time’ limitation on filing, in the absence of statutes imposing such restraints?” Id. at 13. The court acknowledged what it described as a “legislative vacuum” regarding a time limit on filing appeals under ORS 246.910(1), because the legislature had not enacted a time limit for the filing of an appeal under that statute. Responding to that legislative vacuum, the court asserted that “we are required to provide some judicial framework until the legislature provides a statutory one.” Id. The court never explained the source of such a requirement. Turning to Fidanque, the mandamus case, the court acknowledged that the submission process required the Secretary of State to make a series of decisions, that each decision was susceptible to challenge, and that the first exercise of the Secretary of State’s authority occurred when she approved the proposed initiative for circulation. Id. at 15-16. The court noted that “eleventh hour challenges” might cause initiative proponents to waste their resources in collecting signatures and might force courts to “steamroll through the delicate legal issues to meet the deadline for measures to be placed on the ballot.” Id. at 16 (quoting Fidanque, 297 Or at 718).
*686Proceeding from the foregoing reasoning, the court announced that a “reasonable” time filing deadline should apply to appeals under ORS 246.910(1). The court continued by announcing that “[t]here is a season for each kind of challenge to the Secretary of State’s administration of the election laws * * *.” Id. at 17. The court then announced that, by looking at the statutory appeal period allowed under the APA, the court could determine that 60 days after approval of the ballot title was a reasonable time period for filing a one-subject challenge under ORS 246.910(1). The court held that, because the Secretary of State had approved the proposed initiative for circulation on August 16, 1985, the “deadline” that the court created had expired nine months before the plaintiffs had filed their action. The court then applied its newly announced deadline retroactively to the plaintiffs’ appeal and dismissed it. Id. at 19.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Ellis opinion is that, due to the court’s perception that the legislature had failed to append a filing deadline to ORS 246.910, the court believed that it was authorized by something inherent in the court’s judicial power — a source of authority that the Ellis opinion never made clear — to manufacture a filing deadline for a statutory appeal and to dismiss any appeal that a party had filed after that deadline. That reasoning reflects serious legal error.
For a very long time, Oregon law has condemned any arrogation of the legislature’s lawmaking power by a court, including under the guise of statutory interpretation, as action in excess of lawful judicial power. In State ex rel Everding v. Simon, 20 Or 365, 26 P 170 (1891), this court addressed the meaning of an 1889 statute that amended an 1885 law that had provided for the election and the term of office of the office of Portland Police Commissioner. The court observed that the 1889 statute had repealed the existing statutory provisions for an election and the term of office. The incumbent police commissioner urged the court to recognize that the 1889 deletions were unintentional and to “fill in” the absent election procedures by interpretation. This court stated:
*687“This is a case, it would seem, where the legislature has omitted by mistake or otherwise to make the necessary provisions to carry out its intention, but we cannot by construction supply these omissions. As was said by Davies, J., ‘It is always competent for the legislature to speak clearly and without equivocation, and it is safer for the judicial department to follow the plain and obvious meaning of an act, rather than to speculate upon what might have been the views of the legislature in the emergency which may have arisen. It is wiser and safer to leave to the legislative department to supply a supposed or actual casus omissus than to attempt to do so by judicial construction.’ (People v. Woodruff, 32 N.Y. 364.) Courts cannot supply omissions in legislation, nor afford relief because they are supposed to exist. To adopt the language of Mr. Justice Woods, in Hobbs v. McLean, 117 U.S. 579, ‘when a provision is left out of a statute, either by design or mistake of the legislature, the courts have no power to supply it. To do so would be to legislate and not to construe.’ ”
Id. at 373-74.
That passage in State ex rel Everding reflects current Oregon law. It is clear that the court in Ellis acted beyond the scope of its legitimate judicial authority in fabricating a filing deadline for an appeal under ORS 246.910(1). The Ellis court ignored the most fundamental precept of judicial review of a statute: That the responsibility for deciding matters of policy — such as whether a particular filing deadline (“reasonable” or otherwise) shall govern a statutory remedy — rests exclusively with the legislature, not the court. That is, whether there is or should be a “season” for challenges permitted by ORS 246.910(1) is solely a question for the legislature.2
*688It might be possible to distinguish Ellis from the present appeal, which challenges in part conduct by the Secretary of State that occurred after the election. Ellis stated that it was placing a timeline requirement “on pre-election challenges of this kind,” and, as a consequence, the court declined to address whether “a post election challenge of the kind that occurred in Anthony v. Veatch, 189 Or 462, 220 P2d 493[,] reh den [,] 221 P2d 575 (1950), still would be possible. But see State ex rel Fidanque v. Paulus, supra, 297 Or at 719.” Ellis, 302 Or at 19 n 5. The passage of Fidanque that Ellis cited purported to justify the application of laches in Fidanque in part on “the potential availability of post-election challenge under [Oregon Constitution] Article IV, section 20, should Ballot Measure 8 ultimately be approved * * Fidanque, 297 Or at 719.
The majority, however, has chosen to answer the question that Ellis did not decide and has extended the Ellis deadline to apply to challenges under ORS 246.910(1) to official acts occurring both before and after an election. The question, therefore, is whether the court should treat Ellis as a case law precedent and extend the Ellis deadline to challenges to post-election official actions.
In determining whether this court should adhere to Ellis as a precedent, we must look to the standards that this court has established for determining whether a particular case deserves that status. Some of this court’s decisions have repeated what has come to be known as the rule of “prior interpretation.” For example, in State v. King, 316 Or 437, 445-46, 852 P2d 190 (1993), this court stated:
“When this court interprets a statute, the interpretation becomes a part of the statute, subject only to a revision by the legislature. Having once construed the same provisions of this statute, albeit in a slightly different context, to have a particular meaning, we will not now consider a contrary interpretation.” (Citations omitted.)
I have discussed elsewhere my concern that that statement does not reflect Oregon law and is an unnecessarily rigid deviation from the correct rule that governs this court’s adherence to case law precedent: The rule of stare *689decisis. State ex rel Huddleston v. Sawyer, 324 Or 597, 638-44, 932 P2d 1145 (1997) (Durham, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). However, even the purported rule of prior interpretation applies only when an earlier case has interpreted the statute that the court is reviewing. Ellis did not purport to interpret ORS 246.910 or any other statute in creating the 60-day filing deadline.3 The court fabricated the 60-day deadline because the legislature supposedly had failed to establish any time limit for filing appeals under ORS 246.910.4 In that context, the so-called rule of “prior interpretation” is inapplicable, because no prior interpretation of a statute exists.
Neither is the Ellis deadline entitled to deference under the principle of stare decisis. The court’s unilateral announcement of a time limit on a statutory appeal, and the absence of support for the deadline in the text of ORS 246.910 or any other contextual statute, undermine the legitimacy of Ellis as a precedent. If, indeed, the legislature chose, as the Ellis court asserted, to impose no deadline on the opportunity of registered voters under ORS 246.910 to challenge official acts or failures to act under election laws, that policy choice deserves respect and deference by this court, not a judicial veto.
Other aspects of the Ellis court’s rationale indicate that the act of manufacturing a deadline was not a valid *690exercise of judicial power and that that act does not merit deference under the doctrine of stare decisis. For example, the Ellis court’s announced concern for the resources of petition circulators is beside the point: The court must assume instead that the legislature took that concern into account in enacting ORS 246.910(1). It is obvious that the legislature was even more concerned that Oregon registered voters should have a prompt and effective method of challenging every unauthorized official act or failure to act under Oregon election laws whenever such a default might occur.
The Ellis court’s concern regarding the deleterious effect of “eleventh-hour” appeals on the court’s ability to analyze sensitive questions before an approaching election similarly is unfounded. Nothing in ORS 246.910 requires any court to decide an appeal under that statute before an election or any other election-related event. ORS 246.910(3) authorizes “the circuit courts and Court of Appeals, in their discretion,” to “give such precedence on their dockets to appeals under this section as the circumstances may require.” I agree that that subsection anticipates prompt judicial consideration and determination of appeals under ORS 246.910(1). However, the Ellis court’s notion that the courts are under pressure to decide appeals under ORS 246.910(1) before elections goes well beyond anything that the statute implies. And, pressure of that sort applied by the parties to an appeal, although understandable in the context of pre-election appellate advocacy, in no way justifies the judicial adoption of a nonstatutoiy deadline to defeat all but the earliest challenges to assertedly unauthorized official conduct.
The purported pressure of an impending election is absent, in any event, in this case, because plaintiffs filed their appeal after the election. The Ellis court’s concern that “eleventh-hour” appeals might place, pressure on the courts to decide important legal questions in haste is irrelevant when, as here, the appeal asserts that the Secretary of State’s allegedly unauthorized conduct occurred or continued after the election.
Finally, Ellis failed to analyze this court’s previous determinations in other cases discussed above that, under *691Secretary of State’s official power is subject to review under ORS 246.910. Those earlier statements from this court give full effect to the wording of ORS 246.910 that “any act or failure to act” is subject to appeal. Ellis failed to analyze either those previous statements from this court or the inconsistency between the court’s deadline and the statute’s promise that any act or failure to act by the Secretary of State under an election law is subject to appeal.
The rule of stare decisis does not require the court to adhere to the Ellis deadline as a case law precedent. The foregoing concerns about the legal efficacy of the Ellis deadline and the court’s expressed reasoning in support of that deadline lead me to conclude that the court should reconsider Ellis, not broaden its application to govern all appeals under ORS 246.910.
My review of the text of ORS 246.910, including the statutory context and pertinent case law, indicates that each of the Secretary of State’s multiple actions in the initiative process is subject to an appeal as it occurs, not only the first act. The trial court did not err in asserting jurisdiction over the challenges of the individual plaintiffs to the Secretary of State’s actions regarding Measure 7.1 would affirm the trial court’s action in that regard.
CONCLUSION
By extending the deadline created by the court in Ellis to apply to all appeals filed under ORS 246.910(1), the majority has undermined the appeal remedy provided in that statute. No longer may a registered voter bring a judicial challenge under that statute to any act or failure to act by the Secretary of State that allegedly exceeds his authority. Instead, the majority has twisted the legislature’s scheme to confine such challenges solely to the Secretary of State’s first purported exercise of authority.5 As this case illustrates, that *692window of opportunity to file a challenge can expire many months or years before the Secretary of State places the proposed measure on the ballot, counts the votes, or certifies the measure’s passage or defeat in an election. Once the court-made deadline expires, no registered voter or other adversely affected citizen may use ORS 246.910(1) to challenge a Secretary of State’s later exercises of authority to advance a proposed measure to the ballot, despite a total absence of legal authority to do so and regardless of the public costs at stake.
The election law responsibilities of the Secretary of State and other election officials are not simple. Constitutional requirements for lawmaking by initiative require careful observance at all stages of the initiative process, not only at the earliest. The legislature designed the appeal remedy in ORS 246.910(1) to permit an adversely affected citizen to protest in court whenever any act or failure to act by an election official falls short of legal requirements under election laws. The majority’s result defeats, rather than respects, the legislature’s remedial scheme. Although I concur in the majority’s disposition of the other claims under ORS 28.020,1 dissent from the majority’s dismissal of the individual plaintiffs’ claims under ORS 246.910(1).
For the foregoing reasons, I concur in part and dissent in part from the majority’s decision.

 Because the facts alleged in the two complaints substantively are identical, I address the sufficiency of the complaints together. The League of Oregon Cities complaint ultimately requested a declaration, among other things, that Measure 7 is not valid because it violated the separate-vote requirement in Article XVII, section 1, of the Oregon Constitution, see ORS 28.020 (describing court authority to grant declaratory relief). Notwithstanding that request for a declaration of the invalidity of Measure 7, we determine the sufficiency of a complaint by examining the allegations of the complaint, not the labels used to characterize the claim. Sheets v. Knight, 308 Or 220, 232, 779 P2d 1000 (1989) (“While a claim for relief may fail to plead a specific theory, it should not be dismissed if it pleads a claim for relief under some theory, even if it was not the one the plaintiff intended.” (Footnote omitted.)). Applying that rule here, the court may not reverse the trial court’s assumption of jurisdiction if the allegations of the complaints are sufficient to plead a claim for relief under some theory, including the claim identified in ORS 246.910(1).

 Relying on Ellis, the court has announced a different deadline of five days for filing a challenge under ORS 246.910 regarding a fiscal impact statement. State ex rel Bunn v. Roberts, 302 Or 72, 82, 726 P2d 925 (1986). Also relying on Ellis, the court has held that a petitioner may file a timely challenge under ORS 246.910 by appealing within 60 days the Secretary of State’s certification of an initiative petition for the ballot. Crumpton v. Roberts, 310 Or 381, 390, 798 P2d 1100 (1990). As in Ellis, neither of those decisions purports to find a basis for those deadlines in the intention of the legislature. Crumpton also contradicts the court’s conclusion here that a petitioner may challenge only the Secretary of State’s first exercise of authority over an initiative petition, but the majority does not explain away that contradiction.

 The Ellis court did refer to one arguably analogous deadline statute, ORS 183.484(2), which governs the appeal of an “order in other than a contested case.” The court failed to acknowledge that that purported analogy breaks down under analysis, because ORS 246.910(1) applies more broadly to any act or failure to act, not only to orders, and, under the court’s previous case law reviewed above, any of the Secretary of State’s various actions and decisions, once made, becomes subject to review under ORS 246.910(1).

 The Ellis court’s assertion that a "legislative vacuum” existed regarding filing deadlines might have been false, because the court failed to determine the applicability of other potentially relevant statutory deadlines. Those include ORS 12.080, which concerns actions on a liability created by statute, and ORS 30.275, which concerns actions against a public body based on “tort,” which ORS 30.260(8) defines in part to include “the breach of a legal duty that is imposed by law,” that “results in injury to a specific person or persons for which the law provides a civil right of action * * * for a protective remedy.” The court must determine the applicability of those or any other relevant period of limitations before it can assert accurately that the legislature failed to limit the time for filing an appeal under ORS 246.910. Neither of the potentially applicable deadlines cited above would bar the individual plaintiffs’ appeals in this case.

 The majority in a footnote attempts to refute that reading of its opinion, and asserts that the voters still have the opportunity to file timely challenges to other, presumably later, acts by the Secretary of State under ORS 246.910, 334 Or at 657 n 13. However, the majority cannot, square that statement with its dismissal of the complaints of the individual plaintiffs here. Those complaints allege in part that the Secretary of State committed an unauthorized act — canvassing the votes regarding Measure 7 — less than 30 days before the individual plaintiffs filed their complaints. The majority’s explanation for why the individual plaintiffs’ *692complaints about that unauthorized act are not filed timely will have to wait, unfortunately, for another case.