In Portland today, a federal appeals court was hearing arguments that petitioners against Oregon's domestic partnership law got a raw deal. This dispute is not the first of its kind. Such disputes will continue until Oregon makes up its mind to improve the way it decides whether referendum and initiative petitions have enough signatures.

On the merits, the current dispute is not worth having. The domestic partnership law clearly does not violate the prior initiative on the meaning of "marriage," which regardless of what California has done still has a distinct meaning. But above all, the law is doing no harm, and there's no point in fighting it in court.

What's at issue in the lawsuit by a number of voters is something else: Were they unfairly or illegally denied the chance to get their referendum on the ballot?

The state discarded some of the signatures they had gathered, based on the results of statistical sampling.

Sampling is authorized by state law and administrative rules because it's the only way that the Elections Division can determine, within the time limit allowed, whether a measure has received the required number of signatures to qualify for the ballot.

But this isn't the 1970s anymore. Advances have been made in digital scanning and other aspects of technology. It should be possible now to determine, down to the last name, whether qualified voters have signed a measure the required number of times.

In the sampling process, if one signature shows up twice, hundreds of signatures are discarded on the theory that it's very unlikely for sampling to pick up duplicates. So if one does show up, it must be relatively common for duplicates to be present. But maybe not. Maybe it was a fluke that one voter signed twice and was caught.

Changes could be made in the procedure for gathering signatures and in the method for counting them. And if not, then the time limit for counting signatures could be lengthened or abolished.

On initiatives and referendums, just as with votes in elections, every single valid signature should count. (hh)