Here's what we have left uncounted tonight:

Multnomah 10,994
Washington 12,417
Clackamas 6,467

Last night it was:

Multnomah 10,483
Washington 13,053
Clackamas 3,730

There is something rotten in Denmark.

Is this a vote by mail issue, or a general incompetence/disorganization issue? (I'm hoping beyond hope that it isn't an ethical issue.)

I don't know so I'm guessing, but ballots can be turned in outside of the county they belong in, but have to find their way home to their own counties to be correctly tallied. That could be part of it.

I was wondering the same and the only explanation I could find is that state law allows for a voter to turn in their ballot(s) at ANY county elections office.
The county that receives the ballot is then required to send it to the correct county for the tally.

That said, the disparities you posted in the comments makes me wonder if a bunch of Multnomah County voters were fearful and retreated to their mountain hideouts for the election night....

"Why are we seeing the number of returned ballots increase in the middle of the night on Wednesday night and Thursday morning?"

Because Kate Brown made some promises she needs to keep.

At least the Tri-Met bond lost.

Hard to see how inter-county transfers can explain the increase. The statewide total was 1,468,405 on Wednesday evening and 1,479,188 on Thursday morning -- an overnight increase of 10,783 statewide.

It would be nice to have an explanation from where these ballots are materializing. I am in favor of doing away with vote by mail and returning to the old polling system for several reasons as over one third of voters waited until Election Tuesday to return their ballots to the more far flung drop off sites.

1. People do in deed vote other people's ballots for them.

2. The rise of uncivility and increasing partisanship among the parties seems to have increased since we no longer stand shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors in the booth next to us .....knowing that they are not voting as we are and yet still managing to
remain on more cordial terms and maybe even listening to someone elses political ideas...

Multnomah County checked in a large quality, 20,726 ballots at 1:30 AM Nov 3rd

Polls closed at 8:00 on the 2nd

Where did they come from, who had them,
who delivewred them, what were they doing, who decided to wait to deliver them etc.

I have no idea and don't even care to speculate.

But it's hard to imagine a good excuse and the possibily (however remote) of criminal activity should never be presumed to have not occured.

History is riddled with, "who would have thought?"

Jack: just curious about your math, I looked at the Clackamas site which says 157,485 returned and 153,704 counted - that's about 3,200 uncounted, not what you report. Where did you get your numbers?

I think Sue has the answer - counties don't report a ballot as "returned" until it's in their hands, even if it was returned to another county.

I mean, 3700 uncounted... in case anyone is curious about MY math...

Is this not the laziest, most obsolete and worst job of posting results possible?

http://www.co.multnomah.or.us/dbcs/elections/2010-11/results.shtml

Look at the measures. They couldn't even say what they are.

The Secretary of State consistently has bad data for the number of ballots sent out. I noticed this when trying to track the governor's race yesterday. They're getting turnout percentage data from the counties (and rounding it) and then basing their turnout numbers off of the number of registered voters they have.

Take Multnomah County. SOS shows 420,631 registered voters, but the county's election report shows 417,622. In Washington County, it's 268,632 SOS, 268,120 county; Clackamas is 215,216 SOS, 214,198 county.

Based on those numbers, there are about 17,600 ballots left to count.

Is this not the laziest, most obsolete and worst job of posting results possible?

What are you talking about? The type face? There are problems with our voting system for sure. Courier New is not one of them.

A co-worker lives in Clackamas County. She recently moved there, and received two ballots in the mail. I wonder how many double ballots are out there?? If somebody sent in two ballots, would they each get counted?? Vote by mail - still kinda glitchy.

They had to wait to see how many votes short they were to determine how many ballots they needed left to count. Elections in this state are a joke just like the party in power for the past twenty years. They will get their guy/gal in one way or another.

I am glad Hughes is up. But only about 281 votes after a Clackamas County update late this afternoon. That pretty much can be wiped out by a replay. Did the receiver for instance juggle the ball before going out of bounds? Was that oval actually left blank for the Metro race. Maybe I see a marking, albeit very faintly filled, for Stacey. Send in the lawyers, and its Gore Bush Florida '00.

I give up tracking this thing. Vote counts are not official for a couple of weeks more, and this race could easily get a recount (replay). Maybe even multiple replays.

How does MultCo Electionsaccount for ballots which are rejected due to "non-matching" signatures? Are they simply shredded without opening them, or set in a "maybe we'll need these later pile"? If the voter who was disenfranchised shows up to validate their signature, are those formerly rejected ballots then added back into the official count?

Just wait'll they check under the sofa cushions in the break room.

So, Bojack, if you think something is rotten, this is a perfect opportunity to make your case, and set a legal precedent, at least for Oregon, if not the entire country.

There's bound to be a legal requirement that creates a paper trail at every step in the voting and ballot counting process. And you obviously have the expertise and the resources to pursue this matter.

And even if you end up not being able to prove the existence of corruption or gross incompetence, you'll at least force the system to be improved.

I really am concerned with some of the extreme rightwing people who were elected this year.

There desire to balance the budget and cut spending in the middle of the biggest economic disaster America has ever faced is going to end up killing people who have little or no choice at the moment to better their lives.

We hear all this yap about how its getting better and yet in my personal area, recent data shows that unemployment is getting worse, not better.

And these yahoos what to cut safey nets?

The only people who will benefit from this are the ones who were hurt the least from the economic downturn. So of those same people are the ones who helped it happen.

Don't get me wrong, I want a balanced budget too, but I think we need to raise taxes on the middle class and the upper class to balance the budget as well as force industry to come back home and create jobs in this country rather than outsourcing them to econmic regions we americans cannot compete against

Stacey SHOULD win (thankfully for those of us who support him). The late straddlers apparently broke strongly for him judging by the delta with yesterday's tally.

This is a perfect example of why the paper ballot and vote by mail voting system of Oregon from out of the 19th century needs to be dumped and an electronic voting system put in place by the next general election. In Nevada, they have electronic touch screen voting machines that will produce a paper record of all your votes. The votes are recorded onto a solid state cartridge in each machine. After polls are closed, the cartridges are delivered to the registrar of voters where all the votes are tallied. By midnight on November 2nd, virtually every vote in the state was already counted and tallied. There is no waiting around for ballots to suddenly "show up".
Voters are also given an opportunity to vote early up to two weeks before the general election. On the friday before the general election, early voting is stopped and no more voting takes place until election day. This allows all the County Registrars ample time to count all the early votes and address any issues other issues.

Every electronic voting machine has demonstrated security flaws. Paper receipts are rare and when present complicate matters.

The first thing that should happen under Oregon's dips**t system is that at 8:05 on election night, every county elections board runs all the ballots that it has on hand through a machine to tell us how many envelopes there are. It should take about an hour. And that should give us the maximum number of votes that will be tallied.

As far as one county shipping ballots to another, that's just insane. The rule should be that you, the voter, must get your ballot to your home county by 8:00 on election night, and if it doesn't make it, it doesn't count.

I looked at the Clackamas site which says 157,485 returned and 153,704 counted

The Secretary of State, as of this morning, showed 158,505 received. As of the time of this post, the Clackamas County website was showing 6,467 less than that counted.

As of this hour, we have the uncounted totals at:

Multnomah 10,994 (285,814 returned per Secretary of State Thursday morning, minus 274,820 counted on Multnomah County website tonight)

Clackamas 4,801 (158,505 returned per SOS Thursday morning minus 153,704 counted per ClackCo tonight)

Washington 12,417 (190,072 returned per SOS Thursday morning minus 177,655 counted per WashCo tonight)

The key is the disputed ballots. Presumably Dudleys folks challenged lots in Multco and there could be several hundred pickups.

(per oregonian >5000 multco challenges. Its staceys to lose.)

Come back when you have some facts, OK?

What Jack said.

Whatever is in the office by 8pm is what should be counted.

Since the elections office won't accept a postmark as proof ballot is sent to the election offices on time, why should ballots delivered from other drop off points be considered valid?

This goes for all those ballot drop-off sites in various public venues like libraries. There really isn't any security at these locations, and even worse, no accountability as to when or if they eventually make it to the elections offices in each county.

PJB: Security flaws in electronic voting? Please - that's tin foil hat stuff from a decade ago. Are you also a big Phil Keisling fan - since he's the one that pushed this antiquated mail-in ballot system?
If you're seriously interested in clamping down on voter fraud, maybe you should look closer to home. People filling out other's ballots and then signing them and mailing them in, people getting multiple ballots at two or more addresses in different counties, and the general ineptitude of collecting ballots and posting results within 24 hours. And maybe you should also explain why additional ballots seem to be showing up one or more days after voting closes...

All kinds of shenanigans going on in Clackamas County. Keep an eye on the Martha Schrader-Alan Olson race.

"but I think we need to raise taxes on the middle class and the upper class to balance the budget"

Uh, who exactly do you think pays taxes now? The percentage of federal income taxes paid by the bottom half of all wage earners has generally declined according to the chart shown here. http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

"All kind of shenanagins going on in Clackamas County"...

Care to elaborate - or just speculating about things you know nothing about?

The Secretary of State, as of this morning, showed 158,505 received. As of the time of this post, the Clackamas County website was showing 6,467 less than that counted.

One number from one source at one point in time, another from another source at another point in time...

Jack, I guess we know why you left journalism and became a lawyer...

Reducing taxes actually has increased tax revenue both during the Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush Jr. presidencies.

Political issues aside during those administrations, it is easy to tell that there is an interesting theoretical causation implied by increased tax revenue based on capital investment when taxes are decreased. Tax increases tend to cause constriction of tax revenue based on decreased captial investment, thus less taxes coming in from the "rich" and the "middle class".

Consider also the term "rich" is misleading. People who use this term tend to also be the ones that refer to statistics in household income which are erroneous. As Thomas Sowell said once, "rich" isn't like having brown or blue eyes. People move in and out of this class all the time and in fact, the majority of people move from poor to middle class to rich consistently over their lifetime. Also, "poor" frequently includes teenagers and others that aren't primary heads of household or the sole contributor of income.

Realize this...if you've ever sold a house, for a period of time, you were "rich" for that tax year unless you expempted the capital sale from gains taxes or reinvestment under the tax code for a commercial upgrade.

> As far as one county shipping ballots to another, that's just insane.

It's state law. Insane state law, maybe, but state law nonetheless.

> Security flaws in electronic voting? Please - that's tin foil hat stuff from a decade ago.

Wow. Are you part ostrich Dave? Because your head is buried deep, deep in the sand. I would start with Bradblog.com but just some quick Googling should be more than enough.

> ...in fact, the majority of people move from poor to middle class to rich consistently over their lifetime.

I would love to see some statistics to back up the idea that over 50% of Americans are considered "rich" at some point in their lives.