Hunters Score Major Victory In Oregon Fight

A sweeping Oregon measure to criminalize hunting, fishing, ranching, and pest control has failed to qualify for the 2026 ballot after falling short in two rounds of signature checks.

Story Snapshot

Oregon’s Initiative Petition 28, the so‑called PEACE Act, would have treated lawful hunting and fishing as criminal animal abuse.
Backers turned in about 142,000 signatures, but state officials found far fewer valid than the law requires.
After two rounds of statistical signature testing, the Elections Division ruled IP 28 did not qualify for the November 2026 ballot.
Hunters, anglers, farmers, and landowners see the failure as a major win against extreme animal‑rights politics.

Radical Ban On Hunting and Fishing Fails Ballot Test

Oregon’s Initiative Petition 28, officially titled the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions Act, aimed to strip long‑standing protections for hunting, fishing, trapping, ranching, and pest control from the state’s animal cruelty laws. If adopted, it would have turned everyday activities like deer hunting, trout fishing, livestock slaughter, and rodent control into criminal “animal abuse” under Oregon law. The measure needed 117,173 valid voter signatures by July 2, 2026, to reach the November ballot.

Supporters of IP 28 said they submitted just over 142,000 signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Elections Division, aiming above the typical 140,000 target that campaigns use to cover invalid entries. Under Oregon’s initiative rules, election officials do not simply count every name; they verify signatures using a statistical sampling system tied to past voter turnout for governor. That process is designed to confirm that enough real, registered voters support putting a measure on the ballot, not just signing a clipboard in passing.

How Oregon’s Signature Checks Sank IP 28

Oregon law requires two separate sampling reviews before a statewide petition is rejected. In the first sample of 1,000 signatures from the IP 28 petition sheets, the Elections Division reportedly found only 804 valid entries, or about an 80.4 percent validity rate. Because the campaign needed roughly 82 percent validity across all submissions to reach 117,173 valid signatures from 142,000 raw, that first‑round result triggered a much larger second sample.

State officials then conducted that second, expanded signature review under the same statistical rules and again found that IP 28 did not meet the required threshold. According to coverage of the final decision, only about 104,000 signatures were judged valid—well short of the qualifying number. After completing both rounds, the Secretary of State’s Elections Division formally ruled that Initiative Petition 28 “does not have at least the minimum number of valid signatures needed to qualify for the 2026 General Election ballot.” Under Oregon procedure, that finding ends the petition’s bid for this election cycle.

What Was At Stake For Hunters, Anglers, and Farmers

Background materials from hunting and farming groups explain why IP 28 drew such intense opposition across party lines. Current Oregon statutes treat hunting, fishing, trapping, livestock farming, and wildlife management as legal exemptions from animal abuse charges. IP 28 would have removed those exemptions. That change would have made lawful hunting seasons, recreational and commercial fishing, common pest control, rodeos, and standard livestock slaughter methods potential crimes under the same laws used to prosecute true cruelty.

Oregon petition that would ban hunting, fishing, and ranching is officially dead.

Initiative Petition 28 needed 117,173 valid signatures to make the November ballot but only collected 104,262, falling short by nearly 13,000.

The measure would have removed legal exemptions for… pic.twitter.com/XKp5vUTWwM

— Localize – Farmers Market (@Localizefoodapp) July 28, 2026

Opponents warned that the measure went far beyond “protecting pets” and would gut rural life and food production. Ranchers feared that routine practices such as castration, branding, and humane slaughter would be treated as felonies. Homeowners could have lost clear authority to trap or kill vermin damaging homes or crops. Even raising backyard chickens or harvesting a deer for the freezer could have opened ordinary people to criminal charges under the proposal’s broad definition of animal injury.

Signature Dispute And What Comes Next

Backers of IP 28 argue that the verification process was too strict and that their raw total should have been enough to qualify. They point to Oregon law’s requirement for two rounds of sampling as evidence that estimates can swing on small changes in validity rates. But election rules are clear: only verified signatures count, and the Elections Division must use approved statistical methods to decide whether a petition crosses the legal threshold. In this case, both samples pointed the same way—IP 28 fell short.

This fight reflects a wider pattern in modern ballot politics. Campaigns often tout big collection totals and accuse officials of nitpicking, while state election offices focus on whether real, registered voters signed correctly and in person. For Oregon hunters, anglers, and farmers, the failure of IP 28 is still a serious warning. It shows that well‑funded activists can come close to putting extreme anti‑hunting and anti‑ranching ideas on the ballot, even in a state where many families see hunting, fishing, and working the land as part of their heritage and their rights.