Promise: Clackamas County ballots counted by June 2

Published 5:37 pm Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall promises election workers will finish counting defective primary election ballots by Thursday, June 2 — 11 days before Oregon law requires the results to be certified.

Hall made the commitment in a Tuesday memo to Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, who had requested the schedule last week.

The memo also said the county had received 116,012 ballots by Tuesday, the last day it was legally required to count them if they are postmarked by May 17, primary election day. That is required by a new state law.

The memo also said 57,550 had been counted. A total of 38,381 ballots remained to be duplicated so they could be counted as of 7 p.m. on Monday, the memo said.

By Thursday evening, 81,049 ballots had been counted. 

Each ballot must be duplicated by a two-person team consisting of people from different political parties, usually a Democrat and a Republican. The memo includes a shift chart and estimates of how many ballots will be duplicated and counted each day.

“Based on 20 ballots per team per hour, we estimate that the latest count of 38,381 ballots that we know require duplication, elections staff should duplicate anywhere from 4000 to 10000 ballots each day. The time estimate to complete the duplication efforts of the 38,381 ballots ranges from four days to nine days,” the memo said.

The county has launched a new website devoted to the primary election count with updated figures and additional information about the problem created by blurry barcodes on most ballots.