Clackamas County’s top election official said Friday it will be another several days before workers even start hand-duplicating tens of thousands of ballots marred by a printing error, furthering delays that have upended primary results in Oregon’s third-largest county.
Sherry Hall, the county’s elected clerk, also waffled on whether her office would be able to deliver on a yet-to-be-determined timeline for tallying final results, despite a promise by the county’s chief executive that hundreds of county employees from other departments will pitch in, including on weekends.
Oregon’s secretary of state demanded Friday that Hall provide a timeline by Monday detailing her office’s plans to finish counting votes.
“We can say what it will be, but there are things that could interrupt that,” Hall said during a virtual press conference. “One of the things that could happen is that we have 100 workers scheduled but only 50 show up. I don’t want that to happen, but there are things that happen.”
Yet Hall, who is paid $112,700 a year, remained adamant that Clackamas County would be able to certify the election by the state’s June 13 deadline.
Clackamas County Elections Office workers were observed through glass as they processed by hand thousands of ballots Friday morning. A complete tallying of election results in the county could take through mid-June, according to Clerk Sherry Hall. May 20, 2022 Beth Nakamura/The OregonianThe Oregonian
Asked why county residents should have confidence her office will in fact manage to do so, Hall said, “I really have nothing more to say because I’ve said it will be done.”
County officials reported receiving about 113,500 ballots and tallying 32,000 of them by quitting time Friday. Hall has estimated about two-thirds of all ballots were damaged by a printing flaw. She and her staff first learned of the many blurry barcodes two weeks before Election Day but took few steps to prepare for the onslaught of problems that would generate.
“I didn’t respond to this with the urgency that I should have and I realize that,” Hall told reporters Friday. “This is where we are, and I can’t change that.”
The missteps have left results unknown in key contests including Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, a nationally-watched race in which incumbent U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, a Democrat, appears to have lost to progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner. An estimated 30,000 Clackamas ballots have yet to be tallied in that race.
The state labor commissioner contest, multiple seats in the Oregon House, two decisive county commission races and the presidency of regional government Metro also hang in the balance as Clackamas County struggles with its vote count.
None of the damaged ballots will be hand-duplicated until Monday, however, county officials said Friday.
Hand-duplicating votes from marred ballots onto fresh ones is painstaking, time-consuming work. Two top county officials said they volunteered for shifts in recent days and managed, working with another person, to copy 144 ballots in six hours in one case and 80 ballots in three hours in the other.
At that rate, 24 to 27 ballots per two-person team per hour, the county’s currently promised staffing levels would yield about 9,000 duplicated ballots per day – meaning it would take from Monday through around May 29 to copy blurred ballots before all votes could then be counted. And so far, the county has underdelivered on multiple promises of how many workers would accomplish ballot duplication and on what timeframe.
Hand-duplicating votes from marred ballots onto fresh ones is painstaking, time-consuming work. Two top county officials said they volunteered for shifts in recent days and managed, working with another person, to copy 144 ballots in six hours in one case and 80 ballots in three hours in the other. May 20, 2022 Beth Nakamura/The OregonianThe Oregonian
Hall agreed this week to accept help from as many as 200 county employees who will be reassigned from other departments and trained to duplicate the damaged ballots. They are scheduled to work one of two six-hour shifts spanning roughly 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., officials said.
Election workers from Clark, Marion and Washington counties as well as the secretary of state’s office have also agreed to pitch in with the effort, Hall said Friday.
Kimberly Dinwiddie, a Clackamas County spokeswoman, said the county had 120 people scheduled to work on two shifts Friday and would staff twice-daily shifts over the weekend to process ballots. A journalist for The Oregonian/OregonLive witnessed more than 50 election workers and potentially as many as 60 at work on the first shift Friday.
Hall on Friday said that Clackamas County planned to sever ties with Moonlight BPO, the Bend-based printing company the county’s used to create ballots for the last decade.
“This printer we’ve used for 10 years and have never had a problem,” she said. “We were shocked with this one. I don’t intend to ever use them again.”
-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632
Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com
Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh
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