Oregon Public Broadcasting

It’s been well over a week since the election, but ballots are still being counted all across Oregon. 

A few local measures hang in the balance, but for the most part, as Pete Springer explains, it’s all part of the normal, vote-by-mail process of an Oregon election.

Voter turnout was high for last week’s election -- about 86-percent of registered Oregon voters cast a ballot.  But that’s not a record.

The record was set in the 1960 general election with a turn-out of 86.5 percent.

But the high turnout isn’t what’s behind the seemingly drawn-out ballot counting.

Don Hamilton: “Counting is still going on and it will continue to go on for actually a couple of more weeks.”

Don Hamilton is with the Secretary of State’s office.

Don Hamilton: “There are ballots with signatures that still need to be verified, there are ballots that are being transferred from one county to the other that need to be checked in, there are a lot of ballots that still have to be checked and examined before we get that absolute, final count.”

What Hamilton is talking about are ballots that were dropped off in the wrong county and ballots that don’t match the signatures on voter registration cards. 

When ballot signatures don’t match voter registrations, a letter is sent to voters asking them to to verify their signature.

Mickie Kawai is the elections manager in Washington County.

Mickie Kawai “Washington County had about -- a little over 2000 that we had sent those letters to.  And as of now, we’ve got just a trickle of returns.”

Over in Clackamas County, where a couple of bond measures and levies are too close to call, officials still have about 3000 ballots to count.

Many of these are damaged ballots that were rejected by the vote tally machines.

Sherry Hall is the Clackamas County clerk.

Sherry Hall: “Could be that somebody spilled coffee on them, the dog might have chewed, got it’s teeth through it -- they’re so badly messed up that we have to duplicate them onto a new ballot.”

Oregon county election clerks have until November 24th to verify the votes and submit an official tally to the state.

The state will certify the results the first week of December.