Media Reporting on Ninth Circuit Hearing in Portland The Oregonian, KXL, and Basic Rights Oregon, Continue to Distort the Case against the Oregon Elections Division July 11, 2008 | | LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. - On Tuesday, July 8th, three judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments from State and Basic Rights Oregon attorneys defending the Oregon Election Division's decision to disallow wrongly invalidated petition signers from proving their signatures were valid, within the 30 day window provided by Oregon law. Austin Nimocks, attorney for The Alliance Defense Fund, on behalf of the two dozen plaintiffs who brought the suit - all registered Oregon voters and wrongly rejected petition signers - argued that the plaintiffs Constitutional rights were violated. | | Getting the facts straight In an Oregonian article dated July 9th, news reporter Ashbel (Tony) Green reported that the lawsuit sought to "force a vote on Oregon's domestic partnership law," a mischaracterization of the suit in question and an obvious attempt to deflect from the facts. While the net effect of a positive ruling from the Ninth Circuit Judges may indeed place the domestic partnerships bill on the November ballot, the case is about whether elected and non elected public officials have an obligation to respect the law and the rights of those they are called to serve. Upset at the one sided and unchallenged misrepresentation of the facts by a representative of Basic Rights Oregon on KXL's morning show on Tuesday, the day of the hearing, one listener wrote, "What is at stake is the fair and proper counting of signatures in the state of Oregon! Regardless of political ideology, every citizen of Oregon should demand fair and routine procedures be utilized by their elections offices. In this case, it did NOT happen." | |
| Obeying the law and respecting Oregon citizens By cutting short the 30 day window provided by Oregon law to validate rejected signatures, to just 10 days, the State Elections Division arbitrarily and unlawfully prevented HB 2007 from being placed on the November 08 ballot. Knowing that if only five (5) rejected signers came into county offices to prove their signature was valid, within 20 days after the Elections Division announcement that the petition had failed, requiring them to place the bill on the November 2008 ballot, they opted to ignore the law, and the rights of the 63,000 Oregonians who signed the petitions, the 3000 volunteers who collected the signatures, and thereby all Oregonians who wished to VOTE on this deeply controversial, culture changing, and unconstitutional bill. In so doing they violated their responsibility to follow the law - a law which they themselves had earlier requested be extended to 30 days - and the rights of the citizens who elected them. This is what the case is about, no matter what Ashbel Green or any other reporter or Basic Rights representative says. | | To the judges Two of the three judges are 81 years old and the third is in his late 70's. Two are Jimmy Carter appointees and the third is Ted Goodwin, a Nixon appointee and the infamous judge who wrote the opinion on removing God from the Pledge of Allegiance. All are liberal while Stephen Reinhardt, a Yale graduate from Prineville, Oregon, is the most overturned Judge on the Ninth Circuit All three judges seemed bent on challenging the ADF attorney and defending the Elections Division process rather than the rights of the unlawfully disenfranchised voters. Apparently these facts are not considered important to report to the people of Oregon by The Oregonian, KXL Radio, or Basic Rights Oregon. | |
| The people of Oregon and their public officials
The Elections Division - after reviewing only 1 out of every 20 petition signatures and announcing that Referendum 303 had failed to reach the required valid signature level by only 126 signatures - intentionally closed the door to having their decision changed. In violation of the law, they proceeded to reject the approaches of numerous proven valid signers in order to avoid having to change their decision and certify the will of the people to place HB 2007 on the November 08 ballot.
The people of Oregon have a right to be outraged, and the Judges of the Ninth Circuit Court should be as well. However, with a biased media and activist judges who rule not be the law but by contemporary whim, it will be no surprise that top down government in Oregon will be upheld at the expense of our rights as citizens.
Austin Nimocks, the ADF attorney was correct when he said, "Oregon voters deserve to be heard on this referendum. More than enough Oregonians signed it. The people didn't thwart this effort; government bureaucracy did--and that's not a good reason to toss aside one of the most important rights Americans have." | |
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T&T
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