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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 8, 2018)
THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB SESSIONS FORCED OUT AFTER DEMS TAKE HOUSE PHS FOOTBALL/1B NATION/7A THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2018 143rd Year, No. 17 One dollar WINNER OF THE 2018 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD How the ballots fell HERMISTON Staff photo by Kathy Aney Hermiston High School juniors Rogelio Lemus, left, and Ethan Orozco developed a computer app that won the 2018 Con- gressional App Challenge for District 2. The app uses facial recognition to find missing people by uploading a photo and comparing it with a national database. Staff photo by E.J. Harris A bundle of ballots sits in a bin after election specialist Debbie Swenson visually verified each voter signature Tues- day evening at the Umatilla County Elections Division in Pendleton. Inside Three takeaways from the midterms Complete results from Umatilla and Morrow counties / 3A By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian Umatilla County voters just don’t do it. More than 68.4 percent of Oregon voters cast bal- lots in the midterm election Tuesday, according to the lat- est results from the Oregon Sectary of State. Umatilla County, however, continued its trend of low voter turnout at 56.5 percent. Once again, Umatilla County is dead last in the state. Malheur County was sec- ond to last, at 59.2 percent, and third to the bottom goes to Jefferson with 62.2. Wheeler County had the highest turn- out — 83.4 percent. Umatilla County’s turn- out was not even in the same neighborhood as its bordering neighbors. Morrow County’s turnout was 62.4 percent, Union County’s 67.6 percent and Grant County’s was 73.4 percent. And while Oregon set a record for total ballots cast at 1.9 million, Umatilla County voters returned 24,629, or 3,445 fewer than in the 2016 general election. Tuesday night also turned Pamplin Media Group photo Gov. Kate Brown hugs two supporters on Tuesday in Portland during her re-election win celebration. Democrats face hurdles despite supermajority By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press SALEM — The elec- tion gave Democrats a three-fifths supermajor- ity in Oregon’s Legisla- ture with greater power to impose taxes, but the Sen- ate president said Wednes- day he’ll still seek bipar- tisan support, noting that Republican lawmakers the blue Oregon House bluer. Democrats in the Ore- gon House already had a supermajority, and the elec- could doom revenue-rais- ing bills if they sit out the votes. Senate President Peter Courtney told The Associ- ated Press he felt Oregon Democrats’ celebrations Tuesday evening were too strong. Not only did they win supermajorities in the state House and Senate, See DEMS/8A tion added two more to their ranks. Rep. Greg Smith, Republican from Heppner for House District 57, said he and This facial ID app is bananas, B.A.N.A.N.A.S By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN East Oregonian his caucus face a new reality, but he is ready to forge new relationships and friendships to take care of the needs of his district. “I can work with anyone if they can help solve a prob- lem and I can help them solve a problem,” he said. Smith also said he is going to work as closely as he can with Gov. Kate Brown, Dem- ocrat, and her office, “but I’m going to ask her to remem- ber even though Republicans might be in the minority, we still have good ideas and want to find common ground.” That is going to be a big- ger key for members of the minority party than in the recent past. Republicans who can cross the aisle and make deals will find ways to help their districts. Republicans who let political ideology get in the way of the district needs are apt to find them- selves in the corner. Smith also said the mid- term election could signal some real change is afoot in Eastern Oregon. He said he plans on holding town hall meetings before the start of When two Hermiston High School juniors started their Technology and Web Develop- ment class at the beginning of the school year, they wanted to develop their skills and make something useful. A few months later, they’ve created an app that got the attention of U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, and may be of help to a much wider audience. Rogelio Lemus and Ethan Orozco cre- ated an app that was selected as the winner of the Congressional App challenge. They cre- ated the “B.A.N.A.N.A” (Basic App to Notify Authorities of Non-Authorized Abductions) app, which helps recognize photos uploaded to the app, and tells the user whether the photo matches anything in a statewide database for missing people. Walden called the students to congratulate them on the app, and invited them to a recep- tion in Washington, D.C., which the students hope to attend. Orozco and Lemus said they came up with the idea for the app pretty quickly. “It had been a while since I coded, so the first week was getting warmed up,” Orozco said. “I really wanted to use API,” Lemus said. API, or application programming interface, is a set of tools and methods for building soft- ware. The students used code created by someone else — a practice their teacher Rob- ert Theriault said is common in programming — and rewrote portions of it to meet their spe- See MIDTERMS/8A See APP/8A 6 Oregon cities vote to allow marijuana businesses By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE Oregon Capital Bureau SALEM — Voters in six Oregon cities appear to have lifted or rejected bans on recreational marijuana businesses. Ontario, Joseph, Klamath Falls, Gates, Sumpter and Clatskanie voted to allow recreational marijuana busi- nesses within city limits, according to unofficial elec- tion results from the state Elections Division. Voters in Joseph, Clats- kanie, Ontario and Klam- ath Falls were overturning existing bans on recreational marijuana in those places. Altogether, 29 local mea- sures related to marijuana were on the ballot, accord- ing to an Oregon Capital Bureau analysis of the unof- ficial results. Some communities had multiple measures relating to marijuana on the ballot, separating the question of whether to allow retail sales and to tax such sales. The impact of those measures on the workload of the Oregon Liquor Con- trol Commission, which regulates recreational mar- ijuana, depends on local time, place and manner restrictions imposed by the cities, said Mark Pettinger, an OLCC spokesman. Such restrictions could effectively limit the number of marijuana businesses that could operate within a city’s limits. The state’s workload will also depend on the type of licenses that prospective cannabis purveyors seek in those communities, Pet- tinger said. For example, a license for someone who grows marijuana takes longer and is more complicated to approve than a license for someone who wants to sell marijuana products in a store. The election results show that opposition to canna- bis may be eroding in rural areas, said Don Morse, director of the Oregon Can- nabis Business Council. See MARIJUANA/8A CHI St. Anthony Hospital Family Clinic is recognized as a Patient -Centered Primary Care Home. 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