FROM PAGE ONE
A6 — THE OBSERVER
oﬃ ce will get $370,000 to
spend on public service
announcements, tracking
and responding to election
misinformation and state-
wide ballot tracking, which
legislative budget analysts
said were cheaper if pro-
vided by the state than by
individual counties.
Another $470,000 will
be held for emergencies,
with any remaining money
split equally among counties
at the end of the two-year
budget cycle in June 2023.
BALLOTS
Continued from Page A1
Election Day postmarks
presents some challenges
and drags out counting
ballots.
Oregon, he said, with
a few exceptions such as
challenged ballots, previ-
ously would wrap up its
ballot totals on election
nights.
“Pretty much what the
numbers were, that’s how it
ended up,” Lonai said.
But counties now have
seven days to count ballots
with Election Day post-
marks as they come in.
Lonai said that’s not a good
look.
“Why are your num-
bers changing? Well, that’s
because ballots are trick-
ling in,” he said.
On top of that, he said,
there are times when bal-
lots lack a postmark, such
as when two envelopes
stick together in machinery.
To help counter that, how-
ever, there is a ﬂ uorescent
postmark on the back of
envelopes of a time stamp
showing when it went
through Portland, where it
was sorted, Lonai said, and
those postmarks require a
special scanner to read.
Umatilla County has
two of those, he said, and
will test them soon. Smaller
counties may lack those
scanners and are running
into hurdles getting them.
The upshot of the county
clerks association, he said,
is county elections oﬃ ces
can help one another.
“We don’t think we’re
going to need them that
much,” he said, “but we’re
probably going to share
them with some of the
other counties that didn’t
get them because of supply
chain issues.”
On rare occasions, enve-
lopes come out missing a
regular postmark and the
ﬂ uorescent postmark, he
said, and elections oﬃ ces
then have to contact voters
to verify the ballots.
“Theoretically, there
should not be many of these
SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 2022
‘Options are wide’
Alex Wittwer/EO Media Group, File
A stack of ballots sits in the Union County Clerk’s Oﬃ ce, La Grande, as workers count the ballots for the
special election on Tuesday, May 18, 2021. County election oﬃ ces in 2022 will get additional money to
replace old election equipment and buy postal barcode scanners to comply with a recent law requiring
that ballots postmarked by Election Day be counted.
situations,” Lonai said, and
the seven-day window after
an election is for counties
to handle these matters.
Lonai also said elections
oﬃ cials have to ensure
these kind of scenarios
do not get in the way of
another important job part
of their job — protecting
voter conﬁ dentiality.
That someone votes is
public record in Oregon,
but how someone votes
is not. Lonai explained
the new law could allow
someone to pull the voter
rolls, see when the last few
ballots came in and ﬁ gure
out how someone voted.
In Umatilla County, he
said, the elections oﬃ ce
will run challenged and
last-minute ballots all
together to obscure how an
individual voted.
“This is out ﬁ rst time for
this, so we’ll see what hap-
pens here in May,” Lonai
said.
Union County Clerk
Robin Church said it is too
early to comment on the
funds her oﬃ ce will report-
edly receive.
“I have no comment
until we actually receive
the money,” she said. “Then
1.51
“Some counties were able to get a
signiﬁ cant portion of grant funding to do
things like upgrade their tally systems or
buy a high-speed mail sorter, and other
counties just weren’t able to. It’s really
just trying to take a holistic look at the
counties and seeing who needs what, and
then from there trying to address those
deﬁ ciencies.”
— Tim Scott, Oregon Association of County Clerks vice president
and Multnomah County elections director
a decision will be made as
to how the money is to be
spent for elections.”
Church added that what
the money is spent on will
depend on the state rules
that apply to it.
The Oregon Associa-
tion of County Clerks vice
president, Multnomah
County elections director
Tim Scott, said he expects
more money to go to coun-
ties that lacked funding to
upgrade equipment.
Multnomah County, the
state’s largest, got grants in
2020 to automate more of
its system and replaced its
ballot tabulators just a few
years ago, so it’s in good
shape for the upcoming pri-
mary and general elections,
Scott said.
“Some counties were
able to get a signiﬁ cant
portion of grant funding
to do things like upgrade
their tally systems or buy a
high-speed mail sorter, and
other counties just weren’t
able to,” he said. “It’s really
just trying to take a holistic
look at the counties and
seeing who needs what, and
then from there trying to
address those deﬁ ciencies.”
The secretary of state’s
This is the ﬁ rst year
in which ballots will be
counted as long as they’re
postmarked by Election
Day and arrive at elec-
tion oﬃ ces within the next
week. Previously, mailed
ballots had to be received
by clerks by Election Day,
meaning they typically had
to be mailed several days
earlier. Counties that have
already conducted elections
this year found that the
change in election policy
means more work and a
longer wait for ﬁ nal results.
A Jan. 18 recall election
for two school board mem-
bers in Yamhill County
was the ﬁ rst to allow bal-
lots postmarked by Elec-
tion Day. About 500 bal-
lots arrived during the
week after the election,
and county election oﬃ ce
employees had to look for
postmarks on each enve-
lope to establish the date
they were mailed.
Yamhill County Clerk
Brian Van Bergen esti-
mates that verifying post-
marks will take about a
half day of work for an
employee during the ﬁ rst
few days after an election.
Yamhill County hasn’t
been using machines to
check for postmarks.
That’s on top of the
other work that must be
done before a ballot can be
counted. Election workers
also check voters’ signa-
tures against voter regis-
tration records and contact
voters if the signature is
missing or doesn’t match.
About 14,500 people
voted in the January recall
election, less than a quarter
of the roughly 59,500 who
voted in Yamhill County
in the general election in
November 2020.
If the rate of postmarked
ballots stays consistent in
November, Yamhill County
could have more than 2,000
ballots arrive after Election
Day. Multnomah County,
which had nearly 470,000
voters in its last election,
could have to process more
than 16,000 late-arriving
ballots.
Van Bergen said he’s
waiting for more infor-
mation about how much
money counties can receive
and how they can use
it. The county’s election
building, built in 1935,
needs well over $100,000 in
accessibility and security
improvements, he said.
For one thing, the front
doors to the building are
accessible only by con-
crete steps. There’s a ramp
to the back door, but that’s
where ballots are brought
in. Either building a ramp
in the front or adding secu-
rity measures in the back
could improve accessibility
for voters who can’t easily
navigate steps, he said.
The county also has
technological security con-
cerns, he said, though he
didn’t want to describe
those.
“I know the options are
wide, that they’re not ter-
ribly focused on a par-
ticular type of improve-
ment,” Van Bergen said.
“But what I don’t know is if
we are going to see $10 or
$10,000.”
Crook County Clerk
Cheryl Seely said she’s
waiting to see how the pri-
mary goes and what eﬀ ect
postmarked ballots will
have.
“We’ll kind of have
to see after one election
how that works out,” she
said. “We may ﬁ nd there
is a need for a lot more of
something, I don’t know
yet. It’s kind of a hard one
for me to project.”
— EO Media Group
contributed to this report.