Oregon election workers detail ballot collection and intake process

More than 3.1 million Oregon voters receive their ballots directly in their mailboxes, participating in a statewide vote-by-mail system that began as a local cost-saving experiment in 1981. Behind that familiar routine lies a heavily secured, multi-step intake and verification process inside county offices across the state, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported.

The method dates back to Del Riley, who wondered why counties should print sample ballots when mailing actual ballots could cut printing expenses. A test run with an Albany school levy that fall pushed voter turnout past 75%, nearly 20 percentage points higher than voter participation in the primary a year prior. By 2000, Oregon was the first state in the nation to run all elections by mail, establishing a manual that every county follows today.

Voters can return their paperwork using prepaid postage or drop it into roughly 300 dropboxes statewide. For Marcie Richey, who has worked in the Linn County Clerk’s Office since 1993, the mail system runs smoother than traditional polling places. “I will take vote-by-mail over poll elections any day,” Richey told the Capital Chronicle, noting she previously had to train inexperienced poll workers ahead of each election.

Collecting Dropbox Ballots and Tracking Batches

Ballots are gathered from community dropboxes by election staff carrying affidavits verifying their identity and collection date, typically twice daily in bags, though rural locations are visited just once a day. Every dropbox is chained into place, most have a fire suppression system stored inside, and every ballot collection bag has a lock on it so only the election worker can open it. Once workers bring the collection bags back to the county clerk’s office, they sort the contents into trays and pair each batch with a yellow auditing form.

That yellow form tracks how many ballots there are, any missed signatures or other anomalies, staying with the same batch of ballots until the tallying process at the very end. Staff then run the ballots through a machine that counts them while capturing a digital scan of the signature on each blue envelope. Election workers individually review those captured signatures against voter registration records on a computer monitor. If a signature does not match, staff refer it to several election officials for verification. If an official concludes that the signatures don’t match, the clerk’s office mails the voter a note indicating their ballot was not accepted and requests a new voter registration signature, while users of the state’s ballot-tracking system, BallotTrax, receive alerts.

Extracting and Counting Every Vote Before the Deadline

Once separated, ballots are stored until election staff are ready to triple check the number of ballots in the batch. A team of election staff will hand count the ballots and blue envelopes separately, writing their answers silently before comparing once they’ve both finished counting. Approved batches move to a holding room until tallying begins.

Oregon election workers detail ballot collection and intake process — Photo: yahoo.com

Clear Ballot software tallies the votes on machines kept entirely disconnected from the internet. While counties can begin tallying ballots ahead of the 8 p.m. Nov. 3 ballot deadline, they can’t make any results public until after that deadline. By the deadline, clerks store the final results on a private flash drive to send the results to the Oregon secretary of state.

Security Measures and Historical Fraud Data

Physical security inside the clerk’s office is tight. Cameras are positioned wherever ballots are present, windows are built with reinforced mesh glass to prevent break-ins, and after-hours motion detectors throughout the office will instantly alert local law enforcement and Richey if any movement is sensed. Cleaning crews and other non-election personnel are restricted from rooms containing ballots until election results are officially certified.

Voting by ballot box or mail, election officials say safety measures are in place in Oregon

Research from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution examining elections between 2016 and 2022 found an average of about four fraud cases for every 10 million mail ballots cast. A 2020 study by Oregon’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Office reviewed 61 million ballots cast between 2000 to 2019 and found just 38 criminal convictions of voter fraud, representing a rate of 0.00006%.

Under Oregon regulations, local clerks must hold onto ballots for a period of 90 days following the conclusion of the final deadline for election contests before shredding them. Municipalities and state governments have been instructed through a Trump administration executive order in March to retain primary and general election ballots for a five-year period, while ballots tied to special district contests must be kept for two years. This order is the subject of several lawsuits, including one in which Oregon is a plaintiff.

Voters can track their ballot at OregonVotes.gov/track.