Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend, sits in near-empty Senate on May 4, 2023, the second day of a Republican walkout to deny a quorum.

Ten Republican senators who participated in a six-week walkout this spring — including two from Southern Oregon — won’t be allowed to run for reelection, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade announced Tuesday.

Griffin-Valade wrote that she views voter-approved Measure 113 as disqualifying Oregon lawmakers who received 10 or more unexcused absences during the 2023 legislative session from running for reelection in 2024.

That was clearly what voters intended, even though wording of the full text of the measure said absentee lawmakers couldn’t run in the election “after” their term, whereas lawmakers run for re-election about two months before their terms end. Ballot language and media coverage all communicated to voters that the punishment for absences would impact lawmakers in their next term, not a later one.

“It is clear voters intended Measure 113 to disqualify legislators from running for reelection” to a term immediately following the one in which they have 10 or more absences, Griffin-Valade said in a statement. “My decision honors the voters’ intent by enforcing the measure the way it was commonly understood when Oregonians added it to our state constitution.”

She said she directed the Oregon Elections Division not to accept re-electing filings from any lawmaker who skipped that much work.

Voters approved Measure 113 in November as an attempt to crack down on walkouts at the Legislature which Republicans used in 2019 and 2020 to kill priority bills for Democrats, including greenhouse gas cap-and-trade proposals.

But the ambiguous language in the measure came under scrutiny after Republicans once again used the walkout tactic during the 2023 legislative session to get Democrats to water down bills on gun control and reproductive health care.

Measure 113 states that lawmakers who receive 10 or more unexcused absences shall be disqualified from “holding office as a Senator or Representative for the term following the election after the member’s current term is completed.” Boycotting Republicans have argued that the language will enable them to run for reelection in 2024, but not 2028.

The Secretary of State’s Office, however, argued in a press release that courts have “emphasized that the text of adopted ballot measures must be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the voters’ intent. And voters universally understood Measure 113 would prohibit legislators who accumulate 10 or more unexcused absences during a legislative session from holding office in the immediate next term.”

Griffin-Valade’s office also pointed out that media reports and the Voters’ pPamphlet interpreted the measure to mean that lawmakers who received 10 or more unexcused absences would be prohibited from serving their next term.

A spokesperson for Senate Republicans didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. But Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp and other boycotting senators said during the session that they planned to launch a legal challenge to Measure 113.

Knopp, along with eight other Republicans and Sen. Brian Boquist, I-Dallas, racked up more than 10 unexcused absences during the six-week walkout this spring, disqualifying them for reelection under Griffin-Valade’s interpretation of Measure 113.

In addition to Knopp and Boquist, the senators disqualified under Measure 113 are: Daniel Bonham of Madras The Dalles, Lynn Findley of Vale, Bill Hansell of Athena, Cedric Hayden of Fall Creek, Dennis Linthicum of Klamath Falls, Art Robinson of Cave Junction, Kim Thatcher of Keizer and Suzanne Weber of Tillamook.

Six of those lawmakers have only one year left in their terms: Knopp, Boquist, Linthicum, Robinson, Findley and Hansell. Hansell has announced he will retire once this term ends.