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Vote-by-mail election in Oregon has glitches, but not that many
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PORTLAND -- Some voters didn't get a whole ballot, some got an extra one, but county and state election officials say problems have been minor leading up to the first-in-the-nation general election to be conducted entirely through the mail.
Secretary of State Bill Bradbury said officials hope to get a voter turnout in excess of 80 percent by making it easier to vote. However, since the ballots went out Friday, election officials have been slowly learning about glitches in the system.
Portland residents Dawn and Richard Afman opened their mailed ballots Saturday to find duplicate pages on statewide ballot measures, but no candidates and local measures.
"My big concern is, people need to know they should check now, or it's going to be too late," Richard Afman said.
Ballots are due at elections offices no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 7. Voters who find ballot problems after Nov. 2 will have to personally pick up new ballots to ensure they'll be in the mail in time.
Vicki Ervin, Multnomah County elections director, said replacement ballots already have been sent to a couple of dozen voters in her county who had called saying crucial pages were missing from their ballots.
The mistakes apparently occurred when some envelopes were filled by hand after the machine that normally does the work jammed, Ervin said.
In Baker County, problems in a computer program that labels the election ballots meant 200 county voters got two ballots instead of one. Election staff had to restart the label program several times, which probably resulted in duplicate labels, County Clerk Julia Woods said. She said voters who received two ballots should throw one away, since the computer that processes the ballots will reject any attempts to vote twice.
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