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.
Dr. Robyn Jennings
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