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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 28, 2020)
A18 NEWS Blue Mountain Eagle COVID-19 Continued from Page A1 period. They appear to have included the county judge’s full 40 hours per week when he said he only logged 46.5 hours of COVID-19-related time during the 11-week reimburse- ment period from March 1 to May 15. The Eagle submitted a public records request for documentation related to the county court labor reimburse- ment on July 16. As of press time, no documentation for the figure has been provided. Witt O’Brien’s — the com- pany the county contracted with to submit reimbursement documents — removed the entire county court labor cost from an updated summary of the final expenses. County Commissioner Jim Hamsher, the court’s EOC liai- son, and Cook both said docu- ments the EOC submitted for court labor costs included doc- umentation. Cook said Ellison provided the county court pay- roll information the EOC used to submit the reimbursement request. Ellison said she has paid $28,569.36 in new invoices Wednesday, October 28, 2020 Eagle file photo From left, Grant County Commissioner Sam Palmer, County Judge Scott Myers and Commissioner Jim Hamsher during a June session of County Court. that she plans to give to Paul Gray, the county’s new emer- gency manager who took the role after the EOC was shuttered, to submit for reimbursement. She said she does not have an amount for labor costs from May 15 to present. She said Gray will now be handling COVID-19 reimbursement requests. Election Continued from Page A1 is challenged receives a letter stat- ing their signature has been chal- lenged. They have 14 days after the election to get the signature fixed, Percy said. The ballots are then kept in a locked room until seven days prior to Election Day when Percy and her team can begin opening enve- lopes and getting ballots ready for scanning. Percy, Deputy Clerk Brooke Griffith and two board members work together throughout the bal- lot process. The secrecy envelope and the ballots are removed from the sig- nature envelope and are then sep- arated, Percy said. “Secrecy envelopes are set aside with the ballots in them, and the signature envelopes are removed from the table so there are no ballots out with signature envelopes on the table,” Percy said. “There’s no way we’re going to associate those signature enve- lopes back to a secrecy envelope, which ensures confidentiality of how constituents vote.” Percy said all ballots are inspected to ensure they are machine readable and a voter’s actual vote will be recorded accu- rately. Questionable marks may require that the ballot be enhanced or duplicated if the intent of the voter is very clear, Percy said. For example, if a voter makes a correction on their ballot and the intent is clear, their ballot can possibly be enhanced. Percy said, if a ballot is enhanced or dupli- cated, it is processed by two elec- tion workers of different party affiliation. One worker acts as the enhancer or duplicator, and the second observes. “If a ballot is duplicated, both the original and the duplicate have identical numbers assigned for tracking,” Percy said. “The orig- inal is then placed in a secure envelope, and the duplicate is processed.” Percy said this rarely hap- pens because most people call the clerk’s office if they made a mis- take and a replacement ballot is generated, which invalidates the The Eagle/Steven Mitchell Natural Resources Advisory Committee Chair Billie Jo George. Rule Continued from Page A1 The Eagle/Rudy Diaz Grant County Clerk Brenda Percy prepares the ballot machine to count a test deck. The Eagle/Rudy Diaz When a ballot is enhanced or duplicated, it is stamped by an election worker. original ballot. There are instances when peo- ple can receive two ballots, which is caused by a correction to voter registration, Percy said. When a correction is done, it generates a replacement ballot and inactivates the original ballot. An example of a correction in which a voter would receive both ballots is when a voter moves from one residence to another but keeps the same P.O. Box. If their mailing address also changes, the original will be returned to the clerk’s office because ballots by law cannot be forwarded. Percy added that voting twice in the same election is against the law. Dr. Brian Jennings Percy said the tally machines are not internet based. In Grant County, the information from the ballot counting machine is manu- ally entered on election night by Percy to the secure, online report- ing website, results.oregonvotes. gov. “People can rest assured, there is no internet access to these machines in the state of Oregon, anywhere,” Percy said. Voters can check their ballot status at secure.sos.state.or.us/ore- star/vr/showVoterSearch.do. “I am confident that their bal- lots are safe in the mail and are delivered,” Percy said. Percy said many snowbirds, who travel south for the winter, live in Grant County and claim it as their residence. She said they can get an absentee ballot mailed to them and return it to the clerk’s office. “It’s their right to vote here if they claim Oregon as their resi- dence,” Percy said. “They can’t claim residency in the state of Oregon and Arizona.” If a person gets a license or registers in a different state, the state of Oregon is notified, and the county clerk will get the informa- tion, which causes the voter to be inactivated. The county just purchased a new, faster ballot machine, and they are tested prior to each elec- tion. The company that creates the ballots for Percy sends her a test deck for each election to use for required auditing of the machine. Each action taken on the machine and ballots are also recorded in the audit log, which is printed out after votes are counted. There are also securi- ties all around the clerk’s office to make sure everything is done right. “Everything we do is on cam- era, and I have nothing to hide,” Percy said. “There are checks and balances throughout the whole election process.” Dr. Caitlin MacCoun four decades with the Forest Service, said nine out of 10 trees are dead or diseased anyway. Skinner said most dead trees are ponderosa pine because the rule’s whole idea was to pre- serve the ponderosa pine stands. Rude said there are stressed trees, dead trees and dying trees, and he said most people with “any common sense” can see that there are some healthy trees that should not be logged. “It’s common sense,” Rude said. “But we went a long ways away from common sense.” Billie Jo George said the Forest Service can- not do proper forest restoration now because the ponderosa pines now include white fir trees. “The environmentalists are all zeroed in on the pine. When you say ‘21-inch,’ all they think is big ponderosa pine,” she said. “And there’s a lot more to it than that.” Dan Becker said in the Oct. 8 meeting that after reading over the Forest Service’s docu- ment, where it talks about collaboration, moni- toring and adaptive management, that trust has been an issue. “This is the exact reason why we (NRAC) exist,” he said. “Because they haven’t been very forthcoming about their projects with the county and telling us what they’re doing and why.” Becker said, during the Crawford project, the Forest Service wrote into the documents they were going to monitor. “And yet I doubt they ever monitored how much smoke they created,” Becker said. “That affected the town of Austin.” Becker said, if the Forest Service says they are going to monitor, they need to do it. George said they did not care either. Becker said he wants the Forest Service to demonstrate the things they have put into their environmental documents. 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