Slow vote counting in Clackamas County could delay Congressional results until next week; county clerk under fire

By JULIA SHUMWAY/Oregon Capital Chronicle

About 200 Clackamas County employees will be temporarily assigned to process ballots beginning Thursday as the third-largest county in Oregon struggles to process election results.

Printing errors on many ballots made them unreadable by county machines, resulting in bipartisan teams of election workers hand-copying affected ballots. By midday Wednesday, the county had still only counted about 10,000 ballots, and it didn’t report any results to the Secretary of State’s Office until after midnight Tuesday.

The delays mean voters likely won’t learn until next week whether U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Oregon, will lose his seat to progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner. McLeod-Skinner holds a commanding lead in the rest of the 5th Congressional District, but Clackamas County is home to Schrader and about 45% of the district’s Democratic voters.

Late Tuesday night, Secretary of State Shemia Fagan said she was “deeply concerned” about the delay, as both Oregon’s chief election officer and a Clackamas County voter.

“While I am confident that the process they are following is secure, transparent and the results will be accurate, the county’s reporting delays tonight are unacceptable,” Fagan said. “Voters have done their jobs, and now it’s time for Clackamas County Elections to do theirs.”

The county’s ballot counting issues also delayed election results in several important local races, including for the president of the regional Metro Council, two county commission seats and two open House seats with contested primaries. Voters in Oregon City, Tualatin and West Linn are also waiting on the results of proposed changes to city charters and proposals to raise taxes for parks.

Clackamas County Administrator Gary Schmidt said during an emergency county commission meeting Wednesday that he has reassigned approximately 200 county employees, including many emergency medical technicians, to the elections office. They’ll work in two shifts daily starting Thursday and through  weekends until all ballots are counted, he said.

The county now has 26 people – 13 bipartisan teams of 2 – working on duplicating ballots, County Commission Chair Tootie Smith said. They can process about 1,500 ballots a day, while the county expects to receive about 90,000 ballots.

“I have been in talks with people at the elections department who are decades-long observers,” Smith said. “They know the process very well. They too are very concerned about how slow it’s going.”

Commissioner Sonya Fischer said she asked Hall on Friday whether county election officials would work on duplicating ballots through the weekend, and received no response. Hall told commissioners Wednesday most of her employees didn’t want to work on the weekend, so they didn’t.

“I would like some assurances that she is going to accept our help and also accept any help or support from the Secretary of State’s office,” Fischer said. “I have complete confidence after hearing how the duplication happens that these results will be accurate and reported at some point, but our voters deserve to know the results as quickly as possible.”

Hall told commissioners she was ready to accept help from county employees from outside her office, but she hedged on whether she would take assistance from the state Elections Division and other counties, which have also offered assistance.

The state’s deputy elections director was in Clackamas County Wednesday, waiting for a response to offers to provide staff, Fagan spokesman Ben Morris said in an email. State election staff offered assistance during an in-person visit Monday and again in writing midday Tuesday, Morris said.

“Our expectation was that they would be better prepared on election night,” Morris said.

Hall was elected county clerk in 2002, and her 20 years in office have included several high-profile errors.

In 2010, Clackamas County had to spend $120,000 to reprint ballots after mistakenly including a county commission race that wasn’t up for election until November. A county election worker was convicted for ballot tampering in 2013 after another worker spotted her filling in votes on a partially-filled ballot.

When she was running for re-election in 2018, Hall had her name printed prevalently on ballot materials, resulting in a complaint to state election officials and a law explicitly prohibiting county clerks’ names from appearing on any ballot materials when the clerk is also on the ballot.