WAYS TO ENSURE ELECTION SECURITY

Clackamas County has some leeway to run elections that maintain security, accuracy, and integrity. The following are my solutions to current election problems, which can be implemented on the county level. Note: the Oregon Revised Statute (ORS), which follow each remedy, provide Oregon’s Constitutional legal guideline to support these necessary changes.

  • Hand-count all ballots. This is probably the most critical. It’s simple, very accurate, expedient, and costs less than buying expensive voter tabulating machines, which can be hacked.
    ORS 246.520, ORS 254.485, ORS 254.074, ORS 254.476, ORS 254.478, ORS 254.485, ORS 254.495

  • Verify county voter rolls. Eliminate the deceased and out of county voter from the rolls. We don’t want non-Clackamas County Citizens voting in our elections.
    ORS 247.002 (2), ORS 254.476

  • Water-mark ballots to assure all ballots received at the clerk’s office are valid. This would make it easy to throw out any fake ballots.
    ORS 254.185, ORS 254.505

  • Don’t report partial vote results until all ballots are received. This discourages 3am ballot dumps, to push a specific candidate into the lead. Along with water-marked ballots, this creates top-level security.
    ORS 246.120, ORS 246.200, ORS 246.210

  • The Supreme Court may rule that all ballots must be received by the end of election day. But until then, we need to separately tally all ballots that come in after election day. Do they show a mathematically impossible result favoring one candidate. For example, are 95% of votes for candidate X and only 5% for candidate Y, or do they show a percentage consistent with pre-election-day tallies. Why have we gone from election day, to election week or month?
    ORS 254.470

  • Don’t allow opening and then scotch-taping your ballot envelope. Why did the current clerk think this was a good idea? If you make a mistake after the envelope is sealed, go to the county office to get a new ballot envelope. When an envelope is opened and resealed, the chain-of-custody is broken and there are no assurances that another person didn’t open your envelope to change your vote to their liking.
    ORS 254.074