Ballot fiasco delays results in Oregon, vote-by-mail pioneer

An unexpected printing problem on mail-in ballots for Clackamas County, Oregon is causing significant delays in tallying election results for the state’s recent primaries. Approximately 60,000 ballots – about two-thirds of the county’s ballots returned so far – have blurred barcodes which render them unreadable to voting machines. The painstaking manual recounts by local election workers, undertaken with bipartisan supervision, may delay an announcement of results until they must be certified on June 13th. While Oregon has successfully employed an all mail-in ballot system for over twenty years, observers speculate that the current debacle may lead to statewide legislation requiring counties to test run their ballots through printers and voting machines before mailing them out to voters.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Image Credit: M.O. Stevens