Switch in ballot procedures has some worried about secrecy

Ever since Oregon approved voting exclusively by mail in 1998, Hasso Hering took comfort that a sealable "secrecy envelope" would guarantee his right to a private ballot.

So when the 72-year-old from Benton County opened his ballot for the May primary, he was confused to see a non-sealable "secrecy sleeve" instead.

Benton is among at least five Oregon counties, including Multnomah County, Marion County, Deschutes County and Washington County, to trade sealed envelopes for sleeves in hopes of speeding up ballot counts while still protecting voters' privacy.

But voters such as Hering worry the change could make it easier for elections workers to put a name to a ballot marking.

"It is a principle of our ballot," said Hering, a retired journalist. "How you vote is your business and no one else's."

State law requires counties to receive permission from the Secretary of State's office before changing their ballot secrecy provisions. The office must find the "procedure will provide substantially the same degree of secrecy."

"You still never have a case where someone is looking at the voted ballot along with the return envelope with the signature on it," said Jim Williams, director of the state's elections division, adding that "the new design cuts the processing time almost in half."

In Multnomah County, ballots are processed in batches of 200 at a time, said Tim Scott, director of elections. Workers, in groups of four, empty ballot return envelopes after placing them face down on a table, covering voters' signatures. Some ballots are inside a secrecy sleeve, though some people choose not to use it.

But Scott said workers wait before opening ballots or taking them from privacy sleeves. The return envelopes are first gathered, bound with zip ties and removed from the table.

"Once that's been done and there's no identifying information on the table," Scott said, "they start removing ballots from the sleeve and unfolding the ballot."

The old envelopes had a scalloped edge that took time to rip open, Scott said.  But "with the sleeves, all you do it grab the corner and pull the ballot out," he said.

In Deschutes County, the sleeves cost about a half-cent more each than than the envelopes. Multnomah County's entire order for 600,000 sleeves cost an additional $2,328.

But that money is made up, Scott said, by savings in staff time spent counting ballots.

"We get hundreds and thousands of ballots back," he said. "Even a fraction of a second adds up to hours."

Williams, the state's elections director, expects other counties could follow.

Hering said he wished counties would have kept the envelopes, as "a useful gesture" that officials are "serious about the secrecy of the vote."

"The envelopes were a bit of the guarantee on the other end," he said, "that it would be very, very difficult for anyone to connect your vote with your name."

- Talia Richman

trichman@oregonian.com

@TaliRichman

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