The absurd petition to criminalize hunting, fishing, and ranching in Oregon has failed to make the November ballot.
On Friday afternoon the Oregon Elections Division found the petitioners fell short by about 13,000 valid signatures. At least 117,173 signatures were needed to qualify.
No one expected the PEACE Act (People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions) to be approved by voters this November. Even David Michelson, IP28’s chief petitioner, admitted that the intent this year was more to start a conversation within the state, rather than actually pass the initiative.
It seemed likely the initiative would at least make it to the ballot, however, as organizers originally reported 142,784 signatures. Petitions in Oregon require a signature verification process that discards duplicate entries and other issues before a measure be approved for the ballot.
“I want to see it fail, resoundingly, so they don’t try again or try to put more financing behind it,” Brian Lynn, Sportsmen’s Alliance vice president of marketing and communication, told Outdoor Life earlier this month. “At some point common sense has to kick in, even in Portland.”
Disdain for IP28 was perhaps the one political sentiment that Oregon Democrats and Republicans had in common. Gov. Tina Kotek (D), Senate President Rob Wagner (D), and House Majority Leader Ben Bowman (D) all publicly opposed the initiative along with all House Republicans. In fact, no notable officeholder in the state has publicly supported IP28.
The initiative would have canceled any exemptions to the state’s animal-cruelty laws. Currently there are exemptions for regulated recreational activities, like hunting and fishing, and for “good animal husbandry.” The PEACE Act would have effectively made it illegal to hunt, fish, ranch, farm, conduct animal research, control pests, and much more. The economic and cultural effects of this initiative would have been too far ranging to fully comprehend.
“This extreme proposal is causing a lot of heartburn for a lot of folks across the state of Oregon,” Todd Adkins, Oregon Hunters Association executive director, told KATU. “It would literally flip this state on its head.”
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It is unclear if Michelson will make another effort to put this initiative on the ballot in Oregon. This was his third failed attempt.
“We do hope long term that we can create an organization that can launch these [ballot initiatives] in multiple states that have ballot initiative processes,” Michelson said in a YouTube interview last year. “We know that this is unlikely to pass in 2026. No one on the campaign thinks that this will pass right now. But our goal is to create a base that can do this in Oregon in multiple election cycles in a row, that can do this in other states. So that in decades — it took the women’s suffrage movement forty to fifty years from the first ballot initiative to getting the Nineteenth Amendment — so it’s a long game …. The world will look so different by the time fifty percent of Oregonians don’t want to kill animals anymore.”