May 28, 2010

Today, the Democratic Party of Oregon filed a baseless election law complaint against the Independent Party of Oregon.

After Democratic Party operatives last week complained that the Independent Party was attempting to raise funds in order to pay for its own primary election in July for all of its 54,000+ members, the complaint filed today with the Secretary of State claims that, if the Independent Party does not conduct such an election (which no minor party in Oregon has ever done), then it would be failing to allow enough participation by its members in its candidate nomination process.

"The Independent Party has consistently cooperated with independent-minded Democratic candidates," said chair Linda Williams, "including our nominations in 2008 of Jeff Merkley for the U.S. Senate in 2008 and Ben Westlund for State Treasurer, among others. But we also nominated independent-minded Republicans who supported campaign finance reform. But this year the Democratic Party and its paid operatives seem so afraid they will not capture our party's nominations that they attack us for trying to conduct a primary election . . . and then attack us if we do not have a primary election. The taxpayers pay millions for the Democratic Party's primary election, but there are no government funds available to pay for ours."     Read more ...