A4
Opinion
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Oregon,
where voting
is easy
nlike much of the
U.S., last month’s
mid-term election
was ho-hum in Oregon —
as in, few election snafus.
The state Elections Divi-
sion certifi ed Oregon’s
results last week, while races
in some states remained
undecided amid recounts,
court challenges and allega-
tions of fraud. From Califor-
nia to North Carolina, ques-
tions have been raised about
the security of absentee vot-
ing by mail.
In Oregon, 1,914,923 vot-
ers cast ballots — a record
for a mid-term election.
Voting violations are rare,
although a union-backed
group, Our Oregon, did
deliver 97 ballots to the
Multnomah County elections
offi ce a day after the election
deadline. The state Elections
Division is investigating.
The ballots were col-
lected from voters but not
turned in by Defend Oregon,
a political action commit-
tee affi liated with Our Ore-
gon. Groups collect ballots
to ensure they are cast, but
the practice — called ballot
harvesting — has raised con-
cerns in some states for fear
that partisan groups might
have discarded ballots,
because of the voters’ demo-
graphics, or altered unsealed
ballots.
Such concerns provide
one more reason why Ore-
gon should make its ballots
postage-paid so more vot-
ers mail them in, as Gov.
Kate Brown proposed in
her 2019-21 state budget
recommendation.
The reality is that the term
“vote-by-mail” is inaccurate.
Ballots are delivered to vot-
ers by mail but not necessar-
ily returned that way. A 2016
survey found the majority of
voters in Oregon, California
and Washington took their
ballots to a county elections
offi ce or offi cial drop-site.
Oregon led the nation
in launching all-mail vot-
ing, and this year gained
U
the distinction of being the
No. 1 state for ease of vot-
ing. Political scientists from
Northern Illinois Univer-
sity, Jacksonville University
and China’s Wuhan Univer-
sity created a “Cost of Vot-
ing Index” to analyze each
state’s election laws.
Following Oregon at No.
1 were Colorado, Califor-
nia, North Dakota and Iowa.
At the bottom: Mississippi,
Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana
and Texas.
Oregon combines vote-
by-mail with automatic voter
registration when an Ore-
gon resident and U.S. citi-
zen visits the DMV to apply
for, renew or replace a state
driver license, permit or
identifi cation card. Brown
wants to expand that auto-
matic registration to include
citizen interactions at other
state agencies.
By the way, 16- and
17-year-olds can register but
not vote until age 18.
However, Oregon lags
in other ways. A third of
U.S. states allow voter reg-
istration up through Elec-
tion Day. North Dakota
doesn’t even require regis-
tration. Yet Oregon cuts off
registration 20 days before
an election, having ended
same-day registration in
the 1980s because follow-
ers of the Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh recruited homeless
individuals around the U.S.
to come to Wasco County
and vote for the sect’s local
candidates.
Vote-by-mail in Oregon
has been studied extensively.
There is little evidence of
fraud, although 48 individu-
als were suspected of voting
twice in the 2016 presiden-
tial election, and six ballots
were submitted from dead
persons.
Such allegations are
unsettling in a state that
prides itself on clean elec-
tions. Yet they are tiny com-
pared with the complaints of
election fraud and vote sup-
pression roiling other states.
Accidents, fi res and mismatched socks
By BRIANNA WALKER
For the Blue Mountain Eagle
“And my ... my ... ?” the lady
quietly stammered from the hotel
room threshold. My family, pulling
our luggage, ducked as we walked
down the sidewalk between the
lady in the doorway and the man
stepping out of his car. “... my
house?” she fi nally asked.
The man silently, solemnly
shook his head. The lady covered
her mouth and let out an anguished
guttural sound as she stumbled
back into the hotel room.
Our luggage seemed loud and
obnoxious as it bumped and clat-
tered across the concrete cobble-
stones. We kept our heads down
and tried to be as unobtrusive as
possible as we made our way to our
own room. It was not hard to miss
that most of the cars in the parking
lot had masks on the dashboards.
Making a second trip to our vehi-
cle for miscellaneous items, my
husband ran into a man who was
walking his two dogs. He had lost
three homes in the fi re: his own,
his daughter’s and a rental. Later
in the pool, a lady told us that her
grandmother’s house was leveled.
The mood of the hotel was not one
of boisterous vacationers and busy
businessmen. Instead, it was as
solemn as the red smoke horizon.
Driving down the highway,
charred ground burned all the way
to the asphalt. Smoke curled lazily
up from blackened fence posts
as we continued south through
the smoky city of Chico. Police
blocked exits off all the roads
heading in the direction of the
active fi re.
I glanced toward the red sky.
This was our annual trip south to
pick up persimmons, citrus and
nuts. As it is close to our anniver-
sary, we usually try to combine it
with a fun activity or two — it’s a
fun trip that the whole family looks
forward to. But this year was dif-
ferent — right from the beginning.
We left in a
rush, unable to fi nd
matching socks, and
forgetting our coats
entirely. No time to
go back, we’d just
make do. Then out
in the middle of
central Oregon — about the time
that radio signals are lost and cell
phone service is sketchy at best —
there was a little smell. The most
terrible little smell — that you ever
did smell. (OK, I’ve been singing
too many kid songs lately.) Really,
it was a bad smell.
“Oh, Bug,” I sighed, twist-
ing around to see in the back seat.
“Why didn’t you tell us you needed
to stop?”
“I clean, Mommy,” he said
pinching his nose as he looked at
me.
My nose twitched, and I tried
to keep my irritation in check. An
accident is one thing, but a blatant
lie? Ugh. I sat forward in my chair
again and looked at my husband, “I
guess we’ll have to pull over.”
We went around corner after
corner with not a pullout in sight.
The traffi c was traveling on at a
pretty decent clip, and my husband
felt the shoulder was too narrow to
pull off safely — especially after
having just attended the funeral
of his friend who was hit while
changing a tire. He fi nally spotted
a wide area and stopped.
I got the wipes while my hus-
band laid down our son on a blan-
ket on the tailgate. The smell said
this was going to be a disaster. I
was surprised to see nothing had
escaped his jeans. I took off his
boots and carefully pulled off his
pants. They were clean! He was
clean! Just like he had said. My
husband and I were both stunned.
To say the smell was pervasively
rank wouldn’t have done a good
enough job of describing how hor-
rible it had been.
We redressed our toddler and
were quickly back out on the road,
and had it not been for what hap-
pened next, we probably would
never have remembered the
incident.
As we rounded the next a cor-
ner, dust billowed across the road,
and there were cars on the shoulder
of the road and some in the middle.
An oncoming semi-truck swerved
and a black dog darted through the
traffi c.
“What’s going on?” I wondered
aloud.
“I think it’s rubberneckers for
the accident,” my husband said,
motioning to the car upside down
on the side of the road. The car’s
tires were still spinning and a
smoke billowed from the over-
turned engine. It took a second
before we recognized the vehicle
we’d been following before we
pulled off for the mysterious smell.
Suddenly an arm fl ung out of the
window. We pulled over, and my
husband and another couple helped
the woman out of the wreck. She
was dazed but alive, crying inco-
herently for her two dogs — we
looked ‘til dark, but unfortunately,
we only found one.
Back on the road, neither of us
felt talkative — both of us real-
izing that had we not stopped to
change “the most terrible little
smell” that it would have been very
diffi cult to avoid being in that acci-
dent. While telling the story to my
cousin the next day, she laughed,
“I guess angels really know how to
let one out!”
A very bad accident and a very
bad fi re — just on the cursory
edge of each. Not enough to feel
the pain that the victims felt, but
touched enough by it that it made
me feel an enormous gratitude for
my life, my family and even our
stinky guardian angels!
Be thankful for today. My socks
may not match — but my feet are
warm.
Brianna Walker occasionally
writes about the Farmer’s Fate for
the Blue Mountain Eagle.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letter: Attend
objection meetings
WHERE TO WRITE
GRANT COUNTY
• Grant County Courthouse — 201
S. Humbolt St., Suite 280, Canyon City
97820. Phone: 541-575-0059. Fax:
541-575-2248.
• Canyon City — P.O. Box 276, Canyon
City 97820. Phone: 541-575-0509.
Fax: 541-575-0515. Email: tocc1862@
centurylink.net.
• Dayville — P.O. Box 321, Dayville
97825. Phone: 541-987-2188. Fax: 541-
987-2187. Email:dville@ortelco.net
• John Day — 450 E. Main St, John
Day, 97845. Phone: 541-575-0028.
Fax: 541-575-1721. Email: cityjd@
centurytel.net.
Blue Mountain
EAGLE
Published every
Wednesday by
To the Editor:
I wanted to say how much I
appreciated everyone that attended
fi rst set of meetings on the Blue
Mountains Forest Plan Revision.
It was great to see everyone who
had traveled from around the West
to have their objections heard or to
support those who were speaking
out about the plan.
I was impressed with the care
each of you took to present your
objections to Mr. French and his
team, but even more, I was awe
struck at the control each of you
team from D.C. stated we would
hear back from them sometime at
the end of January, and we should
expect additional meetings some-
time in March to see what the next
steps would be.
If the meetings are held in
March it will be paramount that
every objector attend the meetings
and participate in the process. I ask
each of you that know you are an
objector to follow Forest Access
For All on Facebook to get cur-
rent information on the process and
how to participate.
Again, I appreciate each of you
that participated.
John D. George
Bates
L
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MEMBER OREGON NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION
showed in a matter that is very
dear to each of our hearts and that
impacts our ability to sustain our
families in northeastern Oregon.
While open access to our moun-
tains seems to be such a simple
concept when it comes to subsis-
tence use, it eludes those that make
decisions who have never had to
worry about heating their homes
with fi rewood or had to extract
food that supplements our families
through the winter.
While we saw a solid turnout
of objectors in the meetings from
Nov. 27 to Dec. 1, I fear a great
deal of those who objected missed
out on these fi rst meetings and did
not have their voices heard. The
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