Well it looks to me like Bradbury made the right choice here, legally. Tough to see him ruling otherwise. But this situation sucks. Yes, I think Chuck Riley is the better choice, and I hope for a strong Democratic majority in the next session; but it appears that Duyck was operating in good faith, with every reason to believe that his candidacy was legitimate, and is now being disqualified for a reason that has no place in a democratic system that is supposed to be "for the people."

This whole idea of very strict, but also frequently-changing, geographic representation is something that makes less and less sense as time wears on. Geography may be the easiest way to divide up the population, but that doesn't make it the best. Hopefully some new ideas start to bubble up before that Constitutional Convention people keep talking about.

What Pete said.

Ditto.

AJ526:

I doubt that - we're talking about the Constitution here. They had no option but to disqualify him from the ballot since he cannot legally serve in the position.

If it was just some administrative rule somewhere, they could have looked at making an exception. But that isn't the case.

Some previous commenters more knowledgeable than I am have pointed out that the system is complaint driven, which seems as if it would undermine a selective enforcement argument.

However, I'd really like to know what knowledgeable persons have to say about some arguments made late on the iteration under Jeff Allworth's column by Isaac Laguedem, that sound at least plausible to me. First was

There's an interesting difference here between the statute on registering to vote and the constitutional requirement to serve in the legislature. The statute on voting says that if your property straddles two districts, you are to register in the district in which your house is located. The constitutional requirement, however, says nothing about where your house (as opposed to your property) is, but says that you must have been an "inhabitant" of your district for one year next preceding the general election. The interesting question is whether, although Mr. Duyck's house is in District 26 and the county should therefore have assigned him to vote there, he is nevertheless an inhabitant (in the constitutional sense) of both district 26 and district 29 because the land on which his home is located is in both districts. On the other hand, if all of his land in district 29 is receiving special farm assessment for property taxes (meaning that it cannot be used for a residence), then by applying for special farm assessment he's stated that the district 29 land is not his residence, and he therefore does not inhabit it.

Immediately after, he wrote:

Having consulted the statute, I noted also that the registration statute reads as follows. It's ORS 247.035(1)(b): "If a person's property is split by a jurisdictional line, the person shall be registered where the residence is located." House Districts 26 and 29 are not, however, "jurisdictions" and the line between them is not a "jurisdictional line." (By contrast, Washington County and the City of Forest Grove are jurisdictions, and the city limits and county lines are jurisdictional lines.) ORS 247.035(3) sets out six factors that an elections official may consider in determining residency of a person for voter registration purposes, and allows the county elections official to consider other unnamed factors also. There's an interesting quirk hidden in another elections statute, ORS 247.038, which states that a qualified person who is homeless or resides in a "shelter, park, motor home, marina or other identifiable location may not be denied the opportunity to register to vote." Mr. Duyck is by no means homeless, but he doesn't have to be. He does reside in an "identifiable location" and the statute allows the county clerk to consider his residence address to be "any place within the county describing the physical location of the person." Mr. Duyck's farm in District 29 is at least at times his physical location. So it's not so clear that he isn't entitled to register in and run from District 29.

Kari then question him in this way, sensibly enough:

Isaac -- one presumes that "inhabitant" means "resident", right? i.e. The place where you rest your head at night, rather than just any place that one visits from time to time throughout the day. Does it make sense that you could be a resident in one district (and registered to vote there) while an inhabitant of another district (and running for office there)? Do you have to be a registered voter in the district in which you run?

To which Isaac L. replied, perhaps plausibly:

Kari, it depends on who's asking the question, and when. In 1957, in a probate case, the Oregon supreme court held that "resident" and "inhabitant" when used in statutes involving jurisdiction are the same as "domicile." In re Fox, 212 Or 80. The court made a similar ruling in 1947, In re Noyes' Estate, 182 Or 1. In 1945, the supreme court ruled that in divorce statutes, "resident" and "inhabitant" are interchangeable, in a statute requiring petitioners to be inhabitants of the state, and that that meant "domicile." However, the court in the same case held that a person could acquire a "domicile of choice" by being physically present somewhere, but a home in a particular building was not necessary to acquire a domicile. Zimmerman v. Zimmerman, 175 Or 585. The same decision held that at common law, "residence" was merely a factual place of abode, and was not the same thing as "domicile." Then in 1952 the supreme court held that "domicile" and "residence" are not the same. Elwert v. Elwert, 196 Or 256. For your second question, I don't think the law requires you to be registered to vote in the district in which you run -- in fact, I'm not sure the law requires you to be registered to vote at all -- but the secretary of state might reasonably rule that if you're registered to vote in City A, you can't claim that you really live in City B and run for office there. It's interesting to me that ORS 247.035(3) gives the county elections officer some discretion to determine where a person lives for purposes of registering to vote, and made that determination, albeit wrongly, when assigning Mr. Duyck to district 29.

At very least these arguments seem to make it not quite a straightforward matter, though maybe in the end they would boil down to legal octopus ink.

I would guess that Jeff will wait and get an official opinion from the SOS and then appeal to see if a judge thinks the SOS is correct before he gives up.

An appeal seems reasonable to me. I was just taking Jeff at face value:

“It’s over, that’s it, it doesn’t sound like there’s any arguing with him,” Duyck said. ... “It’s very final,” Duyck said.

Minor detail on the Admiral's reading of the Republican playbook:

If said rioting peasants would normally be the same ones your party disenfranchised, costumed Congressional staffers may be used in lieu thereof.