PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Ballots continue to be processed throughout Oregon the day after record-setting turnout in the 2020 election.
For Multnomah and Washington county elections offices, things went smoothly. But in Clackamas County, their envelope opener broke.
They received more than 256,000 ballots, which makes it easy to understand how critical the envelope opener is. A technician fixed it Tuesday night and workers resumed processing ballots Wednesday morning.
The malfunctioning opener is not connected to any of the ballot readers and does not affect the ballots themselves.
“It didn’t set us back with any of our ballot numbers,” Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall told KOIN 6 News. “We still had the number we said we would on the first returns at 8 o’clock, but it just stopped the work about an hour-and-a-half early.”
The vote total, Hall said, “has been so huge and we’ve loved it. It was so fun to get all these ballots in. We haven’t seen anything like it before.”
A total of 84% of registered voters in Clackamas County cast ballots.
“I want to thank everyone for voting so early and in such heavy turnout. It was really exciting to be a part of it to see what was coming into our office.”
The 2 ballot boxes in Oregon City will be open until next Tuesday for the mayor recall election.
In Clark County, election workers did a manual count of about 600 ballots for the presidential race, then compared the machine count to the manual count. Everything lined up.
“We do the audit to ensure the process is accurate and to provide physical evidence of that accuracy,” Auditor Greg Kimsey said. “A recount is really the best test of the integrity of an election system and this is a very small scale recount.”
Election workers are now processing ballots that were dropped off Tuesday.
“We have until the 24th to certify the election and valid ballots can still be processed and counted up until November 23,” Kimsey said.
