A controversial proposal to vastly expand animal rights in Oregon has been put out to pasture yet again.
State elections officials announced Friday that Initiative Petition 28 – which would have outlawed hunting, fishing and slaughtering livestock, among other practices – didn’t get enough signatures to make the Nov. 3 ballot.
According to an analysis of signatures by elections officials, the petition contained 104,262 signatures – short of the 117,173 required to qualify for the ballot.
The outcome is a blow to supporters who’d hoped to force a reckoning over how humans interact with the animal world. It’s welcome news to the idea’s many opponents, which include Republican and Democratic elected officials, and industry groups supporting ranching, hunting and fishing.
Even IP 28’s most ardent supporters acknowledged there was no chance Oregonians would approve an idea that would dramatically reshape outdoor recreation and livestock ownership in the state.
“We want to start advocating for these legal protections specifically in the hopes that over time we will be able to both build a stronger base of supporters but also start to shift public opinion closer in this direction,” David Michelson, a chief petitioner behind the petition, told OPB earlier this year.
But despite collecting more than 142,000 signatures in the latest effort, the petition came up short.
“We petitioned until the very last day we could, but ultimately turned in fewer than what we needed,” Michelson wrote in a statement on Friday.
That outcome was foreshadowed earlier this month when an initial analysis of petition sheets suggested too many signatures were duplicative or invalid for the measure to qualify. A second, closer analysis required under elections rules came to the same conclusion, determining fewer than 74% of the signatures submitted were valid.
IP 28 marked the third time Michelson and allies had proposed the animal rights measure – but this year was the first time they thought they might have collected enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
“2026 will not be the year that Oregonians vote on protecting animals from being killed,” Michelson wrote Friday. “If our campaign continues to grow, as it has since 2020, then such a vote may come to fruition in a future.”
The initiative would have removed exceptions for hunting, fishing and livestock husbandry from the state’s animal abuse laws – opening up people who harm, kill or breed vertebrate animals to potential prosecution.
The proposals would have also set up a transition fund to help ranchers, for instance, with financial assistance or job training. And it would have blocked people convicted of animal abuse from owning any animal for a minimum of five years.
The petition’s failure means Oregon voters won’t consider any statewide measures in the November general election.
