On May 30, the Oregon Green Party filed a lawsuit in state court, arguing that the Secretary of State is misreading the definition of “political party” and that the party is ballot-qualified based on its vote in 2008.
The Secretary of State believes the vote test, when met, only gives a party one more election in which it is ballot-qualified. The party argues that when it met the vote test, that should count for the next two elections.
The party also argues that, separate from that, it should be considered ballot-qualified in three U.S. House districts where it met the vote test for Congress in 2010. Here is the complaint. The case is Woolley v Brown, in Marion County Circuit court. The Green Party will be recognized, no matter how this lawsuit turns out, if it gets its registration up to one-half of 1% by August 2012, and it is working on that goal. It needs about another 1,500 registered members.
I understand what the Oregon Green Party wants to do, but I had a hard time reading the complaint. Very respectfully, I think that the complaint could have been a little bit better written.
#1 The law could be better written, and the brief does not include the letter from the Secretary of State with her interpretation.
The states that a party remains qualified at *each* election if either:
(b) The party has 1/2 of 1% of registration some time within the period between the primary and the general election; or
(a) The party has 1/10 of 1% registration of the previous gubernatorial vote, and has a certain percentage of the vote in some statewide race.
I suspect the intent was to base the electoral support level on the preceding general election, but the PGP wants to interpret it as the last time a statewide office was contested.
One advantage of Top 2 Open Primary is that you don’t need elaborate modicum of support thresholds. In a State like Oregon which has party registration, you simply need a minimal level of support to indicate “party-hood” and that a candidate is registered with the party.
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