By the Lincoln Chronicle staff
It’s going to be another two weeks before Lincoln County voters know the official results of the Nov. 4 special election to fund the county’s Veterans Services office via a property tax levy.
After the fourth round of counting Wednesday, a levy that was losing Nov. 4 by 97 votes was now passing by 20 votes. It was the third time the margin had narrowed or flipped since the first results were released last Tuesday.
Last Wednesday, that 97-vote margin rejecting the levy had narrowed to 34 votes. Then Friday, the levy was losing by 15 votes.
County clerk Amy Southwell said Wednesday evening that the levy was now winning by 20 votes – 7,004 to 6,984.
Now, Southwell said, the next vote count will be announced at 5 p.m. Nov. 25 when she releases final, unofficial results. The election will be certified on Dec. 1 and once the election is certified, Southwell can determine if a recount is required.
But will there be a recount? On Monday, Southwell thought there might be. Wednesday night she was not so sure.
The vote difference needs to be one fifth of one percent to trigger a recount, Southwell said Monday, adding that she hoped to “know more on Wednesday.”
On Wednesday, Southwell said a recount was no longer a certainty because there were “many” ballots with minor issues such as signatures or identification questions that her office needed to contact voters and deal with. It’s a process called “ballot curing.” Now, she has two weeks to do that.
State law requires a recount if the difference is less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the total number of votes cast in a specific race, which would be a difference of less than 28 votes in the veterans services levy election.
The latest results on the county clerk’s elections website showed that 97 percent of ballots had been counted with a turnout of 35.5 percent.
Although Oregon law allows voters to fund sheriff’s departments and veterans services via levies, there was uncertainty surrounding the Lincoln County levy from the start. Voters in Tillamook and Josephine counties have turned down similar measures. The local levy had no formal campaign pushing it and Commissioner Casey Miller inOctober said he regretted his vote to put it on the ballot without a more robust discussion of the levy and the county’s budget.
The levy aimed to move the veterans services department away from the county’s struggling general fund to a levy-funded department that would have collected 3.5 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value for five years starting in 2026. That translates to $10.50 a year for property assessed at $300,000.
Veterans Services officer Keith Barnes has said the levy would add a layer of security amid local, state and federal financial uncertainties.
Those who proposed this levy did a terrible job of getting out the word.
We shouldn’t still be counting votes.
And for the record our household voted for it.