Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey has dismissed a challenge to Port of Vancouver Board of Commissioners candidate Don Orange’s voter registration, meaning that the oil terminal opponent will appear on the November ballot.
At a voter challenge hearing held Wednesday, Port Commissioner District 1 resident Carolyn Crain and Camas resident Jason Atkins alleged that Orange doesn’t live in the district and therefore isn’t eligible for the seat. The three Vancouver port commissioners must reside in the district they represent.
The decision issued Friday evening by Kimsey, the county’s top elections official, found that Crain nor Atkins “met the required burden of proof.”
“I’m delighted, and I think it is a victory for people’s right to vote, and I think it’s a victory for people in the port district to have a right to choose their next commissioner,” Orange said in a phone interview Friday evening. “I’m going to be knocking on doors and getting in touch with voters, and press forward for the important issues going on at the port — the same thing we’ve been doing.”
Crain said in a comment on an earlier version of this story online that she intends to further pursue the case in Clark County Superior Court.
“This does not make Don Orange a valid candidate for the port district as the letter of the law is much different to accommodate that. The burden of proof will be on him to prove he is a viable and legal candidate. Regardless of which person wins this election, I fully intend to pursue a legal ruling on this case in court,” she wrote.
Had Orange’s voter registration been canceled, it would’ve invalidated his candidacy for the Port District 1 seat. The widely watched race in turn is seen as a referendum over Vancouver Energy’s proposed oil terminal at the port.
Kimsey wrote in his decision that he doesn’t interpret the state’s laws as allowing him to conduct an independent investigation outside the evidence presented at the voter challenge hearing.
“Even if I had that right, I would not engage in an independent investigation,” he wrote.
He argued that it’s important to maintain public trust and transparency and, to do so, the public should have the same access to information in a voter registration challenge as the auditor.
“Even the most neutral, and well intentioned, auditor could call their own objectivity into question if they conducted an independent investigation involving facts outside of the record,” Kimsey wrote.
Orange was not surprised by Kimsey’s decision, he said, because the case against him had no merit.
He said Crain is an integral part of Kris Greene’s campaign — Orange’s opponent and a supporter of the oil terminal whose campaign is heavily bankrolled by Vancouver Energy — and that her allegations were an attack on his right to be on the ballot.
No one disputed that before March, Orange lived in his home outside of Port District 1 with his wife, who still lives there. Rather, the hearing focused on Orange’s residency between the present and mid-March, when he filed for office from an apartment within Port District 1.
Crain and Atkins argued that Orange should not be considered a resident of the district and took the rare step of bringing a voter challenge against him to Kimsey.
Crain’s attorney, Angus Lee, argues that Orange’s rental lease was signed June 7 and that he back-dated it to March 17.
“The ruling on the voter challenge does not establish that he is a qualified candidate, it only establishes that he is qualified to vote,” Lee said in a phone interview.
He said that in order for Orange to be a qualified candidate, he needed to be a lawful resident at the time of his candidacy filing in May.
“But what we know now is that his lease was signed June 7, and his lease was only produced as a result of the challenge presented so far,” Lee said.
The matter is not over, he added.
The voter challenge was Crain’s second attempt at Orange’s candidacy. She filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against him in August to have him removed from the ballot. But, the suit was dismissed because she waited too long to file her petition after the secretary of state certified general election candidates.
In the 19 years since Kimsey has been county auditor, he’s only held one other voter challenge hearing.
According to the Auditor’s Office, Crain also challenged another person’s voter registration about two years ago, believing a woman whom she encountered while doorbelling wasn’t a U.S. citizen. The woman submitted documents to the Auditor’s Office to prove she was and Crain rescinded her challenge.
Orange said he is not worried about Crain or Atkins seeking review of Kimsey’s decision in Superior Court.
“I live there. No one is going to kick me out of registering to vote because I rent,” Orange said. “This is not quality politics. This is not the way we should be doing things in America.”
The winner of the election will join incumbents Jerry Oliver, a strident supporter of the terminal, and Eric LaBrant, an outspoken opponent, on the three-member board.
