The Secretary of State’s Office closed a petition to recall Gov. Tina Kotek on Oct. 28 after no signatures were submitted by the Oct. 27 deadline.
Chief petitioner Bill Minnix sued Secretary of State Tobias Read on Oct. 24, alleging he was initially provided with instructions for a county recall instead of a state recall, causing confusion and preventing people from signing.
Bill Minnix speaks at the Oregon For the People rally at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem on Oct. 18.
The Secretary of State’s office creates the cover and signature sheets for state petitions. The standard form says “only an active Oregon voter, registered to vote in the county, city or district where this petition is being circulated may sign this petition.”
For the purpose of a statewide recall, the area where the petition is circulated is the state.
Days after the petition was approved, Minnix asked for it to be corrected, saying he had been given instructions for a county recall.
The office said he could “start over” with a new cover sheet, he wrote in legal filings.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office told the Statesman Journal the cover sheet would have been updated to say the state was the circulation district for the petition, but would not have changed the rest of the form.
Minnix declined, saying he would lose “thousands” of signatures. The spokesperson said those signatures would have still counted.
Minnix said in a Facebook post that he “made the conscientious decision to withhold submission of all collected recall petitions until this Appeal is resolved.”
The office emailed him on Aug. 18 and again on Sept. 12, with an approved e-sheet and told him the e-sheet on his website was invalid. The office had been waiting for Minnix to provide a return address for the sheet, a spokesperson said.
Those sheets are for single signers to print online and mail to the chief petitioner. The cover and signature sheets are used by circulators to collect multiple signatures.
The office told him in an Oct. 17 letter they would not be extending the timeline and were uncertain if the Secretary of State had authority to do so, according to his lawsuit.
To be successful, the effort would have had to collect the required 292,933 signatures. If the required signatures were collected, the Secretary of State election office would then have 30 days to verify the signatures, after which Kotek would have five days to resign or a special recall election would be called.
Minnix, who is representing himself in the lawsuit, asked the court to grant an emergency motion allowing signature collection to continue for another 30 to 60 days.
A judge denied the requests.
Minnix has appealed the judge’s decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“I am not closing this fight. Our appeal is active, and I will pursue it — if necessary — all the way to the United States Supreme Court,” he said on his website Oct. 27.
The recall effort, Oregon for the People, had signature sites throughout the state and demonstrated at the Capitol twice.
Minnix’s basis for seeking to remove Kotek from office included numerous issues. He alleged she had “violated her Oath of Office” and was trying to place extra taxes on Oregonians to make up for lost federal funds, among other things.
Anastasia Mason covers state government for the Statesman Journal. Reach her at acmason@statesmanjournal.com or 971-208-5615.
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Petition to recall Gov. Tina Kotek fails as its leader files lawsuit
