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Activists revive fears about Oregon voting
Republican voices lead cries that mail-in ballots are ripe for tampering because they are opened before Election Day
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
JEFF MAPES The Oregonian

Oregon's ever-controversial system of mail balloting is again under fire, this time from Republican activists who don't like how ballots are handled once they are returned to local elections offices. 
 The charges are beginning to spill into public view on radio talk shows and, most notably, when one of the activists attended Vice President Dick Cheney's campaign appearance last week and asked for federal marshals to protect the integrity of Oregon's voting process.

Although Cheney took a packet from the activist, Ruth Bendl, he provided no indication the feds will get involved.

But the new round of complaints demonstrates how worries continue to swirl around Oregon's unique voting system. It is the only state that relies solely on mail ballots and critics have long questioned whether it is more open to fraud.

Bendl and other activists say they don't like the fact that counties can open returned ballots up to seven days before Election Day, which they say provides too many opportunities for tampering.

Oregon elections officials have just as adamantly defended the system and Secretary of State Bill Bradbury on Tuesday called it "one of the most fraud-free systems in America."

Bendl, who has long been critical of the mail-balloting system, belongs to a ballot integrity team set up by the Oregon Republican Party. She plans to join veteran tax activist Don McIntire and state Rep. Betsy Close, R-Albany the Republican candidate challenging Bradbury for secretary of state for a rally on the State Capitol steps at noon today to draw attention to their concerns.

Bendl said she is worried about "Florida-like" handling of the ballots once they are received by county elections officials.

Under state law, the county offices are allowed to remove the ballots from their secrecy envelopes before the Nov. 2 election to begin preparing them for counting.

Workers stack the ballots and examine them to make sure the voting marks can be read by the counting machines. Elections workers add marks to ballots where the voter intent is clear but the vote won't be picked up by the machine. Bendl said she believes that "enhancing" the marks of voters could lead to problems.

"I seriously worry, and I don't think it's enough to have observers there," Bendl told Cheney, "because what happens after hours? For seven days, those exposed ballots are there, and anything can happen."

Bradbury and county clerks who run the elections offices say they are confident the ballots are secure. They say that by opening the ballots early, they can carefully prepare them for the machines and keep a better inventory on how many ballots they have than in the old days of polling-place elections.

"I am not concerned about the integrity of our process because we have been doing this for so long we have the process pretty well-defined," said John Kauffman, the Multnomah County elections director.

Kauffman said the ballots are handled by four-person teams, who by law can't all be members of the same political party and who have to agree on the voter's intent before a mark is enhanced. The parties are also allowed to have observers present to watch over the process, he said.

After the ballots are prepared for counting, Kauffman said, they are stored in a specially locked room until Election Day.

Not all counties have the same ballot security procedures. In Linn County, they're kept in a secure room inside boxes sealed and signed by retired law-enforcement officers. But in Clackamas and Washington counties, the opened ballots are kept in the same rooms where the processing teams work. But officials in those two counties say their entire offices are securely locked at night.

The election officials also say that if they had to wait until Election Day to open the ballots, voters would have to wait an extra day or two for results.

Bendl said that would be fine with her.

"We can wait," she said. "I'd rather have the actual vote than the interpreted vote, thank you very much."

In the wake of the close vote in Florida that threw the outcome of the 2000 election into doubt, both parties say they will monitor Oregon's voting process closely this year.

In particular, there is widespread concern that groups who collect ballots from voters do, indeed, turn them in to county elections offices. Elections officials have long warned that voters should be careful about giving their ballot to anyone.



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