The DPO’s election night door policy

In last week's Winners & Losers list, the Inside Edge put the Democratic Party of Oregon in the losers column for the door policy at its election night party.

Marc Siegel, a party spokesman, took exception to our comment that security guards were hired to keep some people out of the celebration.

"The real story about the DPO's Election Night Celebration is how hard the state party and campaigns worked to open the event up to as many people as possible," he wrote to PolitickerOR.com. "The real story is that the DPO and campaigns distributed about 9,500 free tickets and tried to let in as many volunteers and supporters as possible."

In his email, Siegel listed the some of the party's party planning to explain:

• The DPO emailed its volunteer lists, donor lists and other email lists to let Oregonians know how to get these free tickets.
• The DPO reserved a room right near the entrance where people who showed up without a ticket could go to receive one. Everyone who showed up at the door without a ticket should have been redirected to our ticketing room where they could get one. Hundreds, if not thousands of people showed up at the door without a ticket, received one, and then entered the event.
• All the tickets were free and the DPO and campaigns ended up distributing about 9,500 tickets.
• The DPO responded to overwhelming demand for tickets by shifting the event to a much larger space in the Oregon Convention Center so we could accommodate as many people as possible. Just a few days before Election Day, we scrapped our original set up in the OCC and moved to a space with three or more times the capacity as our original OCC location.
• Due to the immense interest and potential for overwhelming the capacity of our event space, we were required to have ticket takers (i.e. security) to make sure we did not violate fire code.
• This was a decision to keep people safe, not to keep people out.