[CFR-Announce] Additional Information re: Both Oregon Campaign Finance Reform Measures Qualify for November Ballot

[FairElections Oregon]

Fairelections Oregon

www.fairelections.net


	

Daniel Meek, attorney

(503) 293-9021

(503) 913-7105 cell 

dan at fairelections.net

	

Harry Lonsdale

(541) 549-1556

(541) 350-4530 cell

harry at fairelections.net

 

 July 28, 2006


It may appear from the information distributed by the Secretary of State 
that Petition 8 was close to not qualifying for the ballot.

This is not accurate.  Petition 8 qualified on the first sample, which 
is only 1000 signatures out of the 152,127 submitted on valid sheets.  
Of those 1000 signatures, 768 were found to be valid, producing a 
validity rate of 76.8%. Similarly, the number of valid signatures on 
Petition 37 was 762, producing a validity rate of 76.2%.


The Secretary of State then applies several adjustments to these 
results.  First, he subtracts 2.2% to find the lower margin of error.  
Then he subtracts an additional 8% based upon a statutory assumption 
that 8% of all of the signatures submitted are duplicates by voters who 
have signed the petition more than once.  *So, the validity percentage 
he reports on the first sample is actually more than 10 percentage 
points below the validity rate found by the county elections offices.*


If a petition fails the first sample, it goes to the second sample, 
which is equal to 5% of the signatures submitted, minus 1000.  For 
Petition 8, that would be about 6,600 additional signatures.  The 
results of the second sample are not adjusted for _assumed_ duplicates.  
Instead, when a duplicate pair of signatures is found, the total number 
of signatures is reduced by 400.  If the petitioners have data-entered 
the names and addresses of those who have signed the petition, and have 
already stricken the duplicates ("scrubbing") before submitting the 
signature sheets to the Secretary of State, then they can expect a 
result on the second sample that is about 8% higher than on the first 
sample.  Since we did that, we would expect our results on a second 
sample to be significantly higher than the results on the first sample.


Of the petitions submitted on July 7 with a realistic chance of 
succeeding, only Petition 86, the Open Primary measure, has gone to the 
second sample stage (although Petition 24 may be heading there).  We 
understand that the Petition 86 petitioners did scrub their sheets for 
duplicates.  Thus, we would expect the results reported by the Secretary 
of State of Petition 86 to be far higher than the results reported for 
all of the other petitions submitted on July 7, because those results 
will not have the 8% deduction for assumed duplicates and will not have 
the 2.2% adjustment for the statistical margin of error.

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