Quinton Smith Lincoln County clerk Amy Southwell, right, and her chief deputy, Janet Cummiskey, go over newly addressed ballots going out in the mail this week. They are in the counting room that will be under observation from Republican and Democrat party representatives beginning Wednesday.

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

A record number of 41,178 ballots were dropped in the mail to Lincoln County voters on Wednesday and should begin arriving in mailboxes Friday and Saturday.

When ballots are returned by the 8 p.m. Nov. 5 deadline, county clerk Amy Southwell expects 33,000 of them – also a record — to be counted if there’s the typical turnout of 80 percent for a presidential general election.

There were 38,445 Lincoln County registered voters in 2020, the last presidential general election.

The record number of registered voters is being pushed by 860 new and updated registrations in the last two weeks as word got out of a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline, Southwell said.

“We’ve had a ton of new people register,” she said.

The big draw, of course, is the presidential matchup between vice president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. In Lincoln County, two presidential election years – 2020 and 2016 – saw a turnout of 80-81 percent. For the non-presidential general election in 2018 the county’s turnout was near 70 percent.

While registered Democrats hold a lead over Republicans – 13,700 to 8,856 – in Lincoln County, it’s people registered with no party – officially called unaffiliated voters – who have the most registrations at 15,469.

But that hasn’t meant much when it comes to voting for president. Just like the majority of Oregon voters, Lincoln County is the rare rural coastal county where voters have favored Democrats running for president for the last six general elections dating back to the Al Gore versus George W. Bush contest in 2000.

This election, voters are also choosing new people for three new statewide offices – attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer. For details on those races from the Oregon Capital Chronicle, go here.

The 4^th Congressional District covers all of Lincoln County and Rep. Val Hoyle is being challenged by Monique DeSpain of Eugene. For details on that race from the Oregon Capital Chronicle, go here.

Oregon voters will also be deciding five ballot measures. For details on those issues from the Oregon Capital Chronicle, go here.

There is just one contested local legislative race – Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, is being challenged by Florence city councilor Jo Beaudreau for the Oregon Senate District 5 seat that runs from Lincoln County south to Coos Bay, and now includes slices of Benton and Lane counties.

In the Oregon House, Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, is running unopposed for his seventh two-year term.

Locally, voters around Lincoln County are deciding racing on everything from one seat on the county’s board of commissioners to mayoral and council positions in every city – Yachats, Waldport, Newport, Toledo, Siletz, Depoe Bay and Lincoln City. For a look at the complete ballot, go here.

Quinton Smith **Lincoln County clerk Amy Southwell, right, and chief deputy Janet Cummiskey expect about 33,000 ballots to be returned and counted for the November general election.**

8 p.m. Nov. 5 deadline

Voters can either mail their ballot – postage is pre-paid – or put them in special ballot collection boxes at all seven city halls and the county courthouse in Newport by 8 p.m. Nov. 5.

The first ballot pick up from the boxes will be Monday, Southwell said, and the first ballots counted Wednesday.

On Nov. 5, two election workers — and for the first time a sheriff’s deputy — will be posted at each of the eight collection boxes to enforce the 8 p.m. cutoff and then take the last of the ballots to the courthouse.

“It won’t count if it’s after 8 o’clock,” Southwell said.

The clerk’s office will release the first results shortly after 8 p.m. Nov. 5, and then update results at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 6 and then at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8. The fourth and final but unofficial results will come at 5 p.m. Nov. 12.

This is the first presidential election as the county’s head election official for Southwell, who had been the county’s chief deputy clerk since 2013, and was elected to the clerk’s position in November 2022 when Dana Jenkins announced his retirement after 32 years.

Quinton Smith Lincoln County clerk Amy Southwell explains how ballots ready for counting are placed in locked boxes labeled by precinct before she runs them through a counting machine. Once they are counted the ballots are stored in another secured box.

Meticulous procedure

By the time votes are announced, Southwell’s crew will have handled ballots seven times and “observed” at least twice by volunteers from the local Republican and Democrat parties.

Here’s how ballot are handled in Lincoln County:

Daily for larger cities and every 2-3 days for smaller communities, two clerk employees will collect the ballots in padlocked boxes. Until 2022 just one employee collected ballots. The county added a second ballot collector when the Lincoln County Republican Party insisted the clerk’s office use two employees – one a registered Republican and the other a registered Democrat.
Once envelopes reach the clerk’s office, employees spread them on a table, sort them into piles of 20, record the total and put them in containers for the next step;
The ballot envelope contains a unique bar code that identifies each voter. Two employees use a special wand to read the barcode, which loads the voter’s information into a secure, county computer. An employee – under a camera’s eye – then calls up each computer file to check the signature on the ballot with the voter’s registration card. If the employee spots issues – the signatures do not have to be a perfect match, just have 2-3 of the same characteristics – then it is returned to the box for processing. The employee also has access to signatures on previous voter registration cards or on their Oregon driver’s license.
If there are still issues with a signature, the employee puts the ballot aside to be double-checked – and decided – by Southwell. If Southwell decides the signature does not match, the voter is sent a letter explaining the issue and asked to return a new, signed registration card.
The county also gets an average of 200 envelopes each election where the voter has simply forgotten to sign it. Those people are contacted and asked to either mail or email their signature or come to the clerk’s office to sign the ballot.
The approved envelopes – with the ballot still inside – are then taken to a separate room where four election workers of different parties sort them by precincts. Then they are run through a machine that opens the envelope and put on a table where the workers take out the additional “secrecy” envelope inside and remove the ballot. This year two observers, after locking up their personal items and cell phones, will sit on the other side of a large window to watch the counting process.
The workers check each ballot for issues such as misplaced marks and then double-check any issues with a second worker. Once they agree, the ballots are put in another locked box.
The actual ballots – which have no identifying codes or marks connecting them to an individual voter – are then run through a scanner by Southwell (and no one else) to record each vote. The tabulations are kept in the computer’s hard drive – which is not connected to the internet – and not released until after 8 p.m. Nov. 5.

Quinton Smith There are cameras in almost every corner of the clerk’s offices in the Lincoln County courthouse, and a television monitor in the second floor hallway where observers from the Republican and Democrat parties can watch signature verification and counting.

“The integrity of and producing a fair and transparent election has always been our goal,” Southwell said.

The level of suspicion – especially from some Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was stolen despite no evidence that it was – has died down in Lincoln County this year. The clerk’s office did get calls when the Oregon voters pamphlet came out and Trump did not have a page in it. But they tried to patiently explain that it was the Trump campaign that decided not to have information in the guide.

“The doubters are still there,” Southwell said. “But I’m very proud of Lincoln County and what we’ve done. Voters are starting to trust a little more. It’s better than 2020, I think. We’ve tried very hard to be transparent.”