Snafus slow 2022 primary election results in Marion, Clackamas counties

Some Oregon voters may be asking themselves this morning: "What happened last night?"

Tuesday's primary election — where voters made their choices for governor, labor commissioner, Congress and the Legislature, among other offices — was met with some hiccups in Marion and Clackamas counties.

And with tens of thousands of votes still uncounted, many races remain too early to call.

Marion struggles to report results to state

Marion County experienced problems reporting election results to the state Tuesday night.

Marion County Clerk Bill Burgess said county officials missed a step in posting a file to the Secretary of State's website. While county election results were posted on its own website soon after 8 p.m., those results were not included as part of the larger state tallies until later Tuesday night.

"The results worked fine on our website," Burgess said. "We thought we had it up and posted to the state website for them to grab, but we didn't. We'd gone through most all the steps but there was another step that needed to be done and we had missed that step the first time. We've learned from that, and things will go up on that website a lot faster now."

2022 primary election results:View live results here

Some legislative and Congressional districts span multiple counties, and so the results the state posts matter because they pull together results from all the different counties the district or office covers.

Burgess apologized Wednesday morning to voters for the "inconvenience" and "aggravation" the issue caused. He said he doesn't think it is going to be a problem in the future.

"We believe this will flow through more efficiently and timely in the future," Burgess said.

As of 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Burgess said, 32,000 of the roughly 70,000 ballots the county elections office has received have been counted and the results posted.

The county has about 30,000 to 35,000 more ballots that it expects to report the results from later Wednesday.

On top of the 70,000, another 2,000 ballots came in through the mail Wednesday,Burgess said. A new state law allows ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be counted — previously ballots had to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

He also said a large number of ballots were dropped off at drop sites on Election Day.

"More people cast ballots later," Burgess said. "What we got from the drop sites late yesterday, that was quite surprising to see that many ballots coming in from the drop sites that late in the day."

More people appear to have cast ballots this year than the most recent comparable election. In 2018, roughly 60,000 Marion County voters participated in that year's primary, Burgess said.

Some races were still too early to call as of mid-day early Wednesday, Burgess said, but he expected to have a "much clearer" idea of where races stand at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Secretary of State steps in to help on Clackamas ballot issue

A ballot-printing issue in Clackamas County, meanwhile, impacted vote counting and lead to delays Oregon's Secretary of State called "unacceptable."

On May 4, the county, which is one of Oregon's most populous, announced there was an issue with blurred barcodes on some ballots. Those barcodes are used to indicate the style of ballot and are used to count the votes in the correct elections, county officials said.

State officials said the issue isn't with the accuracy of the results but the time it takes to verify the results on ballots where barcodes were incorrectly printed.

When a ballot can't be scanned due to a faulty barcode, teams of two from different political parties copy the voter's intent onto a new ballot that can be scanned, said Ben Morris, spokesperson for the Secretary of State's Office. That new ballot is proofread to make sure the intent of the voter is captured and then it is counted.

The original ballots are kept and indexed so the results can be audited.

As of Wednesday morning, workers from Clackamas County were doing that work and could be joined by state workers and potentially by workers from Marion and Yamhill counties, Morris said.

At about 10:15 a.m. Wednesday, Morris said the Secretary of State's Deputy Elections Director Luke Belant was at the Clackamas County Clerk's Office to help and see what extra personnel they might need.

The county posted its first set of results at about midnight Tuesday, more than four hours after ballot drop boxes closed and other counties began posting initial results. Additional results are expected to be posted Thursday.

Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, who oversees elections in the state, said late Tuesday that she was "deeply concerned" about the delays.

"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."

"We have no reason to believe the results will not be accurate and trustworthy," Morris said.

The issue is getting those results in a timely fashion, he said. The state has to certify the election within 21 days.

Morris said the issue in Clackamas points to a larger problem with elections administration being underfunded. He said there are not enough "resources" to proof the printed materials sent to voters.

Claire Withycombe covers state government for the Statesman Journal. You can reach her at 503-910-3821 or cwithycombe@statesmanjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Snafus slow election results in Marion, Clackamas counties