PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Numbers provided by Clackamas County election officials early Saturday evening showed 72% of the returned voters ballots have still not been counted.
Even before the election, Clackamas County officials said the vote tally would be slow and delayed because of the smudged bar codes issue that was discovered weeks before the primary. But the ongoing delay has drawn the ire of Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, not to mention the candidates in affected races still waiting to hear the results, including incumbent Rep. Kurt Schrader and his challenger, Jamie McLeod-Skinner.
Clackamas County ballot returns through May 19, 2022
Clackamas County unofficial results as of May 22, 2022
In a release at 6:39 p.m. Saturday, Clackamas County officials said they had received 113,448 ballots. As of Friday, they had processed 31,979 ballots (including 4637 ballots processed on Friday.)
That means 71.8% of ballots have not yet been counted.
On Friday, Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall appointed county administrator Gary Schmidt as the deputy elections administrator. Schmidt was tasked with assembling a qualified staff of up to 200 county workers to help process the ballots.
Officials said there is capacity for 80 workers at a time on each shift. But Saturday there were only 50 ballot processers.
They said they expect to announce a timeline for when all the votes are counted on Monday. They are also building a new website to provide updated daily tallies, but that site is not yet launched.
KOIN 6 News will continue to follow this story.
KOIN 6 News producer Justin McWhirter contributed to this report.