Curious that with my being active in the community nobody ever asked me to sign any of the petitions that passed yet I was asked several times to sign those that were rejected for lack of valid signatures.

But then I didn't spend much time in downtown Portland.

I was impressed by the fact that one out of every three signatures was declared invalid. An awful lot of election fraud being committed there, with impunity. But that could never happen with vote by mail -- right?

Actually the way they go about dismissing signatures is fraud in my book. Lots of valid signatures end up getting dismissed with really no recourse for the voters.

Vote by mail...ugh. My blood pressure goes up just thinking about it. It's sooo ripe for fraud it's ridiculous. I've seen people "helping" others fill out ballots. I've heard plenty of stories about parents filling out ballots for kids away at college.

It's one of the dumbest practices I can think of.

Secretary of State Kate Brown is corrupt.

If one person had their spouose fill out the address part for both the hole sheet was thrown out.
9000 signatures were thrown out for that reason alone.

The political throwing out of thousands of entire voter signature sheets is
should be criminal.

Evidently Kate Brown was not too careful who she hired as Oregon's Elections Director or was she?

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
Click Go to State:
State of Oregon placed on Black Box Voting Watch List Aug. 2009 due to hiring state elections director with history of obstructiveness to public observation. (See news article this section)

For more details see the following letter:

http://pacificgreens.org/node/81

I suppose the pot proposal is worth supporting, though it's certainly not the most pressing of issues. Most people who aren't in chronic, unbearable pain would probably be better off without marijuana, but it should be their choice. Ending arrests for simple possession for small amounts would save quite a lot of taxpayer money.

"An awful lot of election fraud being committed there"

I don't know if I agree with that. You realize that if they find one thing wrong with one signature on a page they can toss all 15-20 signatures on that page?

However, if the bar is so high for integrity on intiatives, then why is it so low for vote-by-mail which is what really counts?

I wouldn't mind a Legislature that met each year...but in exchange we should have a unicameral Legislature of just 50 Representatives, each serving two years and are re-elected after each two year term.

dg, "helping out 'voters' to fill out their ballots" is a great pasttime at Lewis and Clark. I was depositing my ballot at ABoy on Barbur when the fellow in front of me was depositing over 40 ballots out of his cardboard box. I asked where all these ballots came from. "Oh, I go around the dorm asking and "advising" everyone how to fill out their ballots, then I collect them and here I am". There goes 40 "green votes" into the box.

Yeah, disqualified signatures have nothing to do with fraud. Most of the ones thrown out are never even checked against the signatures on file at your county elections office to find out if they match. They are thrown out based on statistical formulas regarding duplicates and as was mentioned above if a circulator writes an inaccurate date on the bottom of the sheet which disqualifies every signature on that sheet, regardless of whether the person signed it legally.

These byzantine processes brought to you by former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and the current SOS.