PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Clackamas County is experiencing continued delays in counting votes after an estimated two-thirds of ballot barcodes were misprinted, as several primary races, including a Congressional race, hang in the balance.
The printing error left most ballots unreadable by machine, ballots have to be hand copied over. On election night, officials told KOIN 6 News that they had to manually input data and send it to the Secretary of State’s website, which kept them from reporting results on Election Night.
On Wednesday, county officials said they were reassigning up to 200 county employees to work in the elections office to help with the ballot count.
The elections office lunchroom has now been set up to accommodate the bipartisan teams, but the room has been empty all day.
KOIN 6 News found out the delay also includes scheduling those workers for two daily shifts and checking party affiliations since there is supposed to be a Democrat and Republican working as a team filling out the replacement ballots.
County clerk Sherry Hall, who is being blamed by county leaders for the printing error, was at the elections office on Thursday but is not doing interviews.
Meanwhile, workers spent the day taking ballots out of envelopes — getting them ready to run through the machines that kick out most but not all of the ballots.
On Thursday, Representative Janelle Bynum of Clackamas County called for the Oregon House Rules Committee to hold a legislative inquiry after the county completes and certifies the vote.
Bynum said the committee should look into Hall’s inaction after the ballot misprint.
“Despite having time to prepare for an election day disaster Ms. Hall has repeatedly failed to adapt and accept enough help to remedy the current crisis. When voters cast their ballots, they deserve efficient, transparent, and integrity-driven processes to determine who wins those elections,” said Bynum. “I am disturbed by the fact that because there are still so many uncounted votes we will see vote counting into the middle of June. Additionally, the redeployment of employees will undoubtedly have an impact on critical county services. This situation is unreasonable, and untenable and raises important questions that need to be answered.”