Clackamas County Vote Count Continues As Criticisms Of Hall Mount

OREGON CITY, OR — More than a week after primary election night, there are still no official results in Clackamas County. As the vote count continues, so do the criticisms of Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall, who oversees the vote.

Much of the problem in the vote count is attributable to tens of thousands of ballots that were printed with a blurry bar code that could not be read by the voting machines, which forced a manual count. Hall has personally received more criticism and doubt about the process.

Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, who oversees elections in the state, said, "It was very surprising and disappointing that the county had not adequately staffed up" after it was discovered that at least 90,000 ballots would have to be manually duplicated by pairs of election workers — one Democrat and one Republican.

"I found this incredibly frustrating and quite frankly outrageous," she said at a Tuesday news conference.

Fagan repeatedly said that she does not have the legal authority to take over the counting process from Hall and that she can only issue instructions and audit the vote afterward.

Several times, reporters asked if she thought that Hall should resign and whether Hall, who has held the office since 2003 and is up for re-election in November, was fit for office?

Each time, Fagan stressed that working with the legally elected county clerk was her "North Star" at this point and that she just wanted to make sure that every vote was counted.

"The county clerk is the only person who can conduct this election," Fagan repeated.

Things became more complicated for Hall on Tuesday, when video emerged revealing that Hall had been aware that a representative of Rep. Kurt Schrader, the incumbent Democrat representing Oregon's 5th Congressional District, was allowed into the county elections building one hour before it officially opened on primary election day while a representative of Schrader's challenger was forced to wait.

Hall originally denied having any knowledge of how Schrader's representative was allowed into the building. The video showed her supervising at the time the person entered.

Schrader's opponent, Jamie McLeoud-Skinner, who is leading Schrader by a substantial margin, has filed a complaint with the Secretary of State's Office. Fagan confirmed that her office was investigating.

"It is absolutely outrageous to stand in front of the public and say one thing and then have a video showing something very different," Fagan said.

Late Tuesday, Hall filed a timeline with Fagan's office saying that all votes will be counted by June 3.

Hall's office said that there were still 38,381 votes that would have to be duplicated and counted.

Fagan dismissed concerns that there had been some sort of plot to disrupt the voting only for Democrats. She said that different ballots were printed for Democrats and Republicans because it was a primary election. The ballots with the smudged bar codes resulted from a mechanical error and were sent to voters in the Democratic primary.

She added that Hall had assured her before election day that her office would be able to handle the counting of the vote.

This is not the first time that Hall and her office have been criticized.

• In 2010, the county had to spend $118,000 to reprint primary ballots after Hall included a ballot measure that wasn't supposed to be on the ballot until the November election.
• In 2011, the state had to oversee how the county was verifying signatures after it was discovered that the county had verified signatures that turned out to be invalid.
• In 2012, a worker under Hall's supervision was discovered filling in choices on ballots that voters had left blank. The worker was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Clackamas County is the only one in the tri-county region that has an elected county clerk.