Ballot sorting machine complicates counting in Oregon county with crucial US House race

OREGON CITY, Ore. (AP) — Problems with a vote-sorting machine are slowing vote counts in a suburban Portland county that has also been plagued by counting problems in 2022 and hosts a key congressional race this year.

The teller in Oregon’s third-largest county, Clackamas, began experiencing mechanical problems about a week after ballots were mailed to voters in mid-October, election officials said Thursday.

Sometimes the movement of ballots suddenly stops, making it difficult to process a large volume without interruption. The problem also delayed voters’ ability to track whether their ballots had been counted, officials said.

Representatives of the company that manufactured the sorter were on site trying to repair it.

County Clerk Catherine McMullen, who was elected in 2022, said The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday, that ballot processing was “a day behind where we want to be.”

Clackamas County makes up much of the 5th U.S. District, considered one of the nation’s closest races as a Republican governor seeks to hold a seat he wrested from Democrats in 2022.

That same year, a printing error on primary ballots delayed results by nearly two weeks, as tens of thousands of ballots with unclear barcodes were rejected by a counting machine, forcing the county to transfer nearly 200 employees to vote on the tabulation fees.

This year, U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer faces a tough re-election bid in the district, where voters preferred President Joe Biden over Trump by nearly 10 percentage points in 2020. The Democratic candidate is state Rep. Janelle Bynum.

Election workers now process ballots using handheld scanners, a practice currently used in smaller Oregon counties and last used in Clackamas County in 2015, officials said. Workers continue to receive mail-in and drop-in ballots at the same rate and process ballots in the order in which they are received.

By Wednesday evening, officials said nearly 83,000 ballots had been processed.