Oregon Public Broadcasting

The Oregon Secretary of State's office is expecting initiative sponsors to submit petition signatures for a half-dozen initiatives by Friday's deadline. Rob Manning reports.

Non-tribal casinos and non-partisan congressional redistricting are among the issues voters could see this November. Familiar laws may be revisited as well, like mandatory sentencing, medical marijuana, and watershed councils.

But at last count, no initiative petition had the signatures needed.

Don Hamilton with the Secretary of State's office says officials expect sponsors of six petitions to claim they've got the signatures they need, by the deadline.

Don Hamilton: "Only six on the ballot would not be a lot of measures. But Oregon hasn't been as happy with citizen initiatives in the last couple of years. In our last two general elections, Oregon saw 18 initiatives on the ballot, but we passed only three."

Statutory changes need nearly 83,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. Constitutional changes need more than 110,000.

Web extra:

The following petitions already had the Secretary of State's office validate signatures in May. Those "validated" signature counts are below:

(S) #13 mandatory minimums:     66,716 valid     (need 82,769)

(S) #28 medical dispensary:         74,537 valid     (need 82,769)

The SOS office is anticipating additional signatures from the following four initiative petition efforts. Their "unvalidated" signature counts are below:

(C) #50 non-partisan redistricting:     62,200 collected     (need 110,358)

(C) #70 watersheds:                         97,373 collected     (need 110,358)

(C) #76 non-tribal casino:                 41,509 collected     (need 110,358)

(S) #77 authorizes a casino:             41,452 collected      (need 82,769)

(S) = Statutory, (C) = Constitutional