THE BULLETIN • SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2022 A3
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
CLACKAMAS COUNTY
Investigation of ballot fiasco requested
“
BY GILLIAN FLACCUS
AND SARA CLINE
Associated Press
A Democratic state law-
maker from Happy Valley is
calling for a formal investi-
gation into a ballot-printing
fiasco that will delay results
from Tuesday’s primary by
weeks in the state’s third-larg-
est county, with a key U.S.
House race hanging in the
balance.
The call from Rep. Janelle
Bynum, who represents voters
in part of the affected county,
comes amid mounting pres-
sure Friday on Clackamas
County Elections Clerk Sherry
Hall, who has overseen elec-
tions in the suburban county
south of Portland for nearly
20 years.
Oregon Secretary of State
Shemia Fagan said Friday she
had requested a written plan
from Hall showing how she
will get the votes counted by
June 13, which is Oregon’s
deadline to certify the election
results.
Bynum, the state lawmaker,
called the situation “unreason-
able, and untenable” in a state-
ment lambasting Hall, who is
up for reelection in November.
“Despite having time to
prepare for an Election Day
disaster, Ms. Hall has repeat-
edly failed to adapt and ac-
cept enough help to remedy
the current crisis,” she said.
“When voters cast their bal-
lots, they deserve efficient,
transparent and integri-
ty-driven processes to deter-
mine who wins those elec-
tions.”
The debacle has angered
many in Oregon, where all
ballots have been cast only
by mail for 23 years and law-
makers have consistently
pushed to expand voter ac-
cess through automatic voter
“We have talked about that piece, of proofing them after
they’re printed, but we have 447 ballot styles, and so we
would need a few proofs of each ballot style.”
— Sherry Hall, Clackamas County Elections Clerk, below
Gillian Flaccus/AP photos
An election worker examines a ballot at the Clackamas County Elections office on Thursday. Ballots with
blurry bar codes that can’t be read by vote-counting machines will delay election results by weeks in the
primary for the 5th Congressional District, which includes Bend and Redmond.
registration, expanded dead-
lines and other measures. It’s
also thrown into question the
race for the 5th Congressional
District, a redrawn district
that stretches from the edges
of Portland, through a large
portion of Clackamas County,
crosses the Cascades and takes
in Bend and Redmond.
In the Democratic pri-
mary, seven-term Rep. Kurt
Schrader, a moderate, was
trailing in the vote behind
progressive challenger Jamie
McLeod-Skinner. The out-
come could have an outsized
impact in November, with the
possibility that voters could
flip the seat for the GOP.
State Republicans were also
paying close attention to the
ballot catastrophe, including
GOP gubernatorial nominee
and former Oregon House
Minority Leader Christine
Drazan, who had to wait lon-
ger than expected for results
Tuesday night that ultimately
declared her the winner of the
Republican’s crowded primary.
Drazan urged voters with con-
cerns to go to the elections of-
fices, where people can watch
election workers through
several large windows as they
open and count ballots and —
in this case — transfer votes to
new ballots.
State Sen. Bill Kennemer,
a Republican whose district
includes much of Clackamas
County, called the ballot issues
“alarming and concerning”
and said he hoped the crisis
would prompt fixes to the sys-
tem.
“I would really love to see us
after we get through this crisis,
take some deep breaths and
get some experts in there that
we have confidence with, and
then start looking where our
chinks in our armor are and
what do we need to fix it,” he
told the Associated Press on
Friday.
Hall used Moonlight BPO
in Bend — a printer not used
for ballots by any other county
— and said she has used them
for 10 years without any prob-
lems. A man who answered
the phone Friday at Moonlight
BPO said no one was avail-
able to comment and said he
would forward the inquiry to
someone by email.
“We have talked about that
piece, of proofing them after
they’re printed, but we have
447 ballot styles, and so we
would need a few proofs of
each ballot style,” Hall told the
AP. “But then if we had good
proofs but at the end of the
batch the toner is running low
and not intense enough — like
is what the problem is now
— then we wouldn’t see every
ballot.”
As many as 60,000 ballots
are unreadable by vote-count-
ing machines because of
blurry bar codes and up to 200
county employees were being
redeployed starting Thursday
from their normal duties to
hand-transfer the voter’s in-
tent to a fresh ballot that could
be scanned.
The process is painstaking,
and by Friday just 23,000 bal-
lots had been tallied.
Hall said the problem came
to light May 3, when workers
put the first ballots returned
through the vote-counting
machine. About 70 or 80
ballots from each batch of
125 were spit out as unread-
able because their bar codes
were more faint and slightly
blurred. It was too late to print
and mail new ballots, she said.
As Election Day ap-
proached and ballots stacked
up, Hall said she allowed
elections workers to take the
weekend off because just three
people signed up to work Sat-
urday or Sunday. Most elec-
tion workers are “between the
ages of 70 and 85” and they
need rest, she said.
Fagan said her office offered
Hall help twice after the prob-
lem came to light, but Hall
said her county had enough
resources. She did take on
a few county employees on
May 11, more than a week af-
ter learning of the issue, and
dozens more were mobilized
starting Thursday after the
County Commission had
an emergency meeting and
pressed her.
State elections officials say
they have little authority over
the nonpartisan local county
elections officials, who oper-
ate independently and are be-
holden to voters. Hall is up for
reelection in November after
holding the job since 2003 and
is facing off against a longtime
elections administrator and
former librarian named Cath-
erine McMullen.
Salinas, Erickson, win primaries in new Oregon 6th District
Associated Press
State Rep. Andrea Salinas has won
the Democratic primary in Oregon’s
new 6th U.S. House district.
Salinas, who has maintained
her lead as more ballots have been
counted from Tuesday’s primary,
would be Oregon’s first Hispanic
congresswoman if elected in Novem-
ber.
She was endorsed by Massachu-
setts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth War-
ren, a standard-bearer for the party’s
progressive wing.
Earlier this wee,k Democratic can-
didate Carrick Flynn conceded to
Salinas.
On the Republican side Mike Er-
Money poured into the
Democratic race for
the newly created 6th
Congressional District
seat that featured Flynn, a
relatively unknown political
newcomer backed by a
cryptocurrency kingpin
and Salinas, a three-term
state lawmaker.
ickson, a Lake Oswego businessman,
has advanced to the November elec-
tion in the 6th.
Money poured into the Demo-
cratic race for the newly created 6th
Congressional District seat that fea-
tured Flynn, a relatively unknown
political newcomer backed by a cryp-
tocurrency kingpin and Salinas, a
three-term state lawmaker.
The district is located southwest of
Portland.
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