As Robin Fisher walked across Portland State University’s campus, heading to class in the early afternoon of Feb. 5, a man gathering signatures called out.

Fisher, a sociology major, walked over to see what his petition was all about.

The canvasser, a man working for Ballot Access LLC, explained he was collecting signatures for “a ballot initiative to protect the sanctuary-state status of Oregon, and stop Donald Trump from making decisions for Oregonians,” Fisher told Street Roots.

When he pointed out where to sign, Fisher saw that what he was talking about was Initiative Petition 22. Fisher had heard about IP 22 through the Oregon Student Equal Rights Alliance, and the way he described it didn’t seem right. Fisher declined to sign his petition.

While walking away, Fisher pulled out a smartphone to look up IP 22 and realized it would do the exact opposite of what the signature gatherer said it would do; it would repeal Oregon’s sanctuary-state status, not protect it, should voters pass it in November.

The actual ballot title for the initiative reads: “Repeals law limiting use of state/local law enforcement resources to enforce federal immigration laws.”

Knowing that many students at Portland State University are eager to help Oregon’s immigrant communities and would likely be fooled into signing a petition for an initiative they actually opposed, Fisher decided to turn on their phone’s video recording feature and confront the signature gatherer who misled them. (Fisher's preferred pronouns are they, their and them.)

The recording revealed the Ballot Access LLC employee appeared to have no idea what IP 22 would actually do. He even said he was against repealing the state’s sanctuary status and usually collected signatures for “simpler” issues related to marijuana and GMO labeling.

Fisher told the Secretary of State’s Office in a written complaint submitted three days later that 16 other PSU students told Fisher they had signed the petition after being told it was “to protect Oregon’s sanctuary state status,” and that many more said they were also told it was for a pro-sanctuary initiative but didn’t sign it because they were suspicious. Fisher included a link to the video in with the complaint.

In response, the Oregon Secretary of State’s office has opened a formal investigation into Ballot Access LLC, according to a spokesperson for the office, Debra Royal, Secretary of State Dennis Richardson’s chief of staff.

In Oregon, making false statements to anyone who signs a petition or makes requests of information about it can result in a felony conviction and fines of up to $125,000.

Fisher also claimed the two signature gatherers working on campus said off-camera they were being paid $2 per signature – also illegal in Oregon when signatures are being gathered for an initiative.

As of Feb. 12, Royal said, the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office had received four requests from people who said they had signed a petition for IP 22 but, after reading more about it, wanted their names removed. But, she said, Fisher’s is the only official complaint related to the actual signature gatherers for IP 22 her office has received.

Anyone who believes they were tricked into signing a petition and would like to have their name removed should contact Rep. Mike Nearman at rep.mikenearman@oregonlegislature.gov or call his Salem office at 503-986-1423. To expedite the process, call Ballot Access LLC at (503) 444-8236. To file an official complaint, email the Secretary of State’s Elections Division at elections.sos@oregon.gov and include your full name, the time and place of the incident, a description of the canvasser and what the canvasser said to you. Having trouble getting your name removed? Email emily@streetroots.org.

But the problem appears to extend far beyond the downtown college campus.

Our Oregon, a union-backed political advocacy organization, has received complaints from seven people who reported hearing canvassers in the Portland area misleading the public in order to get signatures for IP 22 during the months of January and February.

Katherine Driessen, spokesperson for Our Oregon, said that’s “a lot of complaints,” considering how early in the election cycle it is.

“It sounds like it’s pretty consistent, where they are just wildly misrepresenting – implying that the ballot measure does the exact opposite of what it actually does,” she said. “Folks really only report signature gatherers when the behavior they encounter is really egregious.”

North Portland resident Sunny Petit was one of the people who reached out to Our Oregon to complain. Petit told Street Roots she encountered a signature gatherer, this time a woman, in the Kenton neighborhood the morning of Feb. 7.

Petit said the woman was talking to people as they came and went from Posies Bakery and Café, telling them that if they didn’t want the Trump agenda, they should sign her proposal.

“I thought it was fishy,” she said.

When Petit got home, she checked online to see if there was some other alternative sanctuary initiative that perhaps this woman was collecting signatures for, rather than the initiative to repeal the state’s sanctuary status, as Petit suspected. There wasn’t.

“It was totally, totally misleading,” she said.

“There was a line of people around me who were all coming up to sign it,” she said. “It was ridiculous. They were all super liberal people wanting to do the right thing, including me.”

There have also been unverified reports of fraudulent information being used outside of Portland to gather signatures for the anti-sanctuary initiative.

Fisher’s “isn’t the first incidence we’ve heard of signature gathering gone wrong,” said Joel Iboa, who coordinates One Oregon, a coalition of advocacy groups united on protecting Oregon’s immigrant populations. (Street Roots is a nonactive member of One Oregon.)

“We heard it in Southern Oregon, heard about it in other counties as well,” Iboa said.

Fisher told Street Roots, and included in the complaint to the Secretary of State’s Office, that a conversation with the other signature gatherer working on campus that day revealed that he, too, was misrepresenting the nature of IP 22. Both men said they had never read the initiative and didn’t really know what it did, Fisher said.

Fisher said that upon approaching this second canvasser, a woman was signing his petition.

When Fisher explained the measure would repeal Oregon’s sanctuary status, the woman first jerked her hand away from the petition, and then scribbled out her name, Fisher said.

Fisher said the woman appeared to be upset and said to the signature gatherer, “That’s not what you told me.”

The next evening, other students at PSU spotted the two men gathering signatures near Pioneer Courthouse Square while making the same misleading claims about what IP 22 would do. Fisher also included social media messages from these students in the complaint to Richardson’s office.

One student’s comment stated: “He presented it as a bill preserving sanctuary status and when I confronted him about it, he got suuuuper weird and dodgy about it.”

Another student wrote: “String Bean (the canvasser’s rap name) tried to get me to sign and when I asked him if it was for measure 22 he said no. ‘It’s for sanctuary cities.’”

Susan Mays, a spokesperson for Ballot Access LLC, said just one signature gatherer was misrepresenting the ballot initiative and that he was only doing so for two days. She said all the signatures he collected during that time have been thrown out, but denied that Ballot Access LLC pays its canvassers by the signature.

Mays also said that he has since been re-trained on what the initiative means, and that all Ballot Access’s signature gatherers are required to go online and research the initiatives they are promoting.

The man who owns Ballot Access LLC, Lee Vasche, is also the treasurer at Oregonians for Immigration Reform, the main proponent of IP 22. His various companies – Triton Polling and Research, Triton Communications, Signature Gathering Company of Oregon – have all performed work for Oregonians for Immigration Reform in recent years.

Vasche is scheduled to give a presentation at the next Oregonians for Immigration Reform meeting on “how his PAID signature gatherers enhance our initiative efforts and increase the likelihood of success,” according to the organization’s website.

This is only the most recent controversy surrounding the signature collection for IP 22.

Two of the three state representatives sponsoring the proposal, Reps. Sal Esquivel (R-Medford) and Mike Nearman (R-Independence), were denied a ballot title in 2016 when their effort to get the measure on the 2018 ballot began. And it was denied because according to the Department of Justice, the language used to gather the initial 1,000 signatures to get the process started was misleading. OPB reported that based on DOJ’s review of the language, a person signing the petition would not necessarily understand they were signing a petition in favor of repealing Oregon’s sanctuary status law.

Then in 2017, Oregonians for Immigration Reform collected thousands of signatures under a set of new rules from Richardson that allowed the collection of signatures before a ballot title is finalized.

Our Oregon challenged the new rules with a lawsuit, and Richardson rescinded them with the hopes that the Legislature would adopt the new rules this session.

Adding to the controversy surrounding the measure is that it’s largely being funded by an out-of-state, white nationalist group.

Its sponsors, Reps. Esquivel and Nearman, along with Greg Barreto (R-Cove), also run the Repeal Oregon Sanctuary Law Committee that’s backing the initiative. The committee’s top donor is Washington, D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which was founded by John Tanton, a white nationalist who has advocated for eugenics.

FAIR has contributed more than $60,000 to the campaign, making its most recent donation of $30,000 on Feb. 9.

Oregonians for Immigration Reform is a Salem-based group with close ties to FAIR and a history of backing statewide anti-immigrant measures. It has hosted representatives of white nationalist groups at its meetings, such as Jessica Vaughan, policy director at Center for Immigration Studies. The center releases fear-mongering “studies” and “reports” full of cherry-picked and misleading information, many written by Vaughan herself, that promote anti-immigrant sentiment against undocumented and documented immigrants alike.

Oregonians for Immigration Reform also recently received a donation of $3,000 from another white nationalist group Tanton founded, U.S. Inc.

Jim Ludwick, Oregonians for Immigration Reform spokesperson and co-founder, said he can’t see why anyone would lie about his group’s anti-sanctuary initiative to get signatures.

“I went down to the flea market in Eugene, and we were inundated with people who wanted to sign the initiative,” he said. “We were up at the sportsman show and were overwhelmed there as well.”

Street Roots stopped at the Stop Oregon Sanctuaries booth at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen’s Show last weekend, and while “overwhelmed” is not how we’d describe the scene, the women manning the booth did not appear to be misleading about what the initiative would do.

While holding up photos of Kate Steinle and Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, subjects in a San Francisco murder case that’s been a talking point among nativists nationwide, one of the women told show-goers that signing her petition would get a measure on the ballot to repeal a law that prevents law enforcement from upholding federal immigration laws.

“We have no interest in evading the truth or saying something that’s not there because the issue sells itself to a large extent,” Ludwick said. “We’re the same group that got Measure 88 on the ballot in 2014. And what we do, we’re totally upfront; we’ve got no reason to lie.”

With the defeat of Measure 88, Ludwick’s organization was successful in preventing undocumented immigrants in Oregon from being able to obtain driver’s cards.

Earlier this year, a district court judge in Nevada blocked supporters of a similar anti-sanctuary measure in his state from gathering signatures after ruling that the petition’s language was overbroad and could mislead voters.

Royal said the secretary of state’s investigation into Ballot Access LLC’s collection of signatures is ongoing and she cannot say whether criminal charges will be filed.

This story originally used an incorrect pronoun for Robin Fisher and has been since been corrected to reflect Fisher's preferred pronouns of they, their, them. Street Roots regrets the error.

Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.

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