The ballot-counting debacle in Clackamas County has infuriated voters, drawn criticism from elected officials and left several races in limbo, as officials slowly hand-process tens of thousands of misprinted ballots. But the person at the center of it, elections chief Sherry Hall, is unremorseful and unmoved.
“It’s a horrible thing that happened,” Hall told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board last week, speaking as if the delays in counting ballots resulted from a natural disaster as opposed to her mismanagement. “An apology is, I think, something I have talked about, but it doesn’t change anything.”
With hundreds of county employees now diverted to processing ballots to ensure voters’ choices are recorded before a state certification deadline, Hall’s profound mishandling of the May election is cause enough for the elected clerk to resign. But her deflection of accountability makes clear the need for Clackamas County elected officials and voters to demand it.
Hall has said that the problems in the ballot-counting process first appeared on May 3 – two weeks before Election Day. The machines that tally votes were rejecting about two thirds of the completed ballots due to blurred barcodes on the forms, which were printed by a Bend company. With more ballots coming in each day, Hall opted to assign teams of two people from opposing political parties to duplicate the problematic ballots and feed the new forms into the machines. When she updated commissioners about her plans at a May 12 meeting, she assured them that her office would get the job done.
But Hall never figured out the details necessary to carry out the plan. Astoundingly, she didn’t track how slowly the ballot duplication process was progressing or do the basic math of calculating staffing needs, she acknowledged. She did not keep duplication efforts going over the weekend, despite ballots piling up, and resisted offers for additional help from the county and Secretary of State Shemia Fagan’s office. And by election night, workers had tallied only about 10,300 votes, she said, despite some 80,000 that had been submitted by the end of the day – with tens of thousands still on the way. Clackamas County’s failure to provide substantive vote totals prompted Fagan to call out the delays as “unacceptable.”
As a result, the outcomes of several races are up in the air, most notably the Democratic primary for the 5th Congressional District, in which incumbent Kurt Schrader is currently losing to challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner. A loss would reverberate nationally, and the ongoing uncertainty has shone an unflattering light on Oregon’s beloved vote-by-mail system.
Certainly, the problems appear to originate with the printing shop that issued the faulty ballots. But quality control across all aspects of this process is part of the job of running elections – a position Hall has filled for nearly 20 years and for which she earns a salary of $112,700. Diligence and attention to detail are critical for maintaining both the integrity of our elections and the trust of voters. Unfortunately, Hall’s sloppy performance reflects either a lack of competence or a lack of concern. Neither is acceptable.
This also isn’t Hall’s first mistake. In 2010, she cost the county nearly $100,000 in printing new ballots when she erroneously placed a race meant for November on the May ballot. In 2012, a ballot-processing employee was indicted for filling in races for Republican candidates, raising questions about elections office protocols. An audit last year also highlighted problematic practices under Hall’s management.
Even now, when asked what she would do if the county cannot meet the June 13 certification, Hall said she had no plan to share with the public, saying she would consult with her attorney at that point.
Hall said she has not been asked for her resignation. But Clackamas County voters deserve someone devoted to honoring the most vital act of democracy. If Hall lacks the self-awareness to step down, we urge Clackamas County voters to stand up for election integrity in November by voting her out of office.
-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board