Lane County to mail 1st ballots this Friday

Presenter: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration cannot impose a new rule for vote-by-mail systems—at least not for the Nov. 3 midterm election. Speaking to Lane County commissioners Tuesday, County Clerk Tommy Gong:

Tommy Gong (Lane County clerk): So preparations for the Nov. 3 election are well underway. We’ve done our ballot layout, the styles are finalized. We have 105 different ballot styles that represent all the different district combinations for this November election. A full list of ballot contests and candidates are available on our website.

There are no local countywide measures, so the county is not producing a voter pamphlet. A state voter pamphlet will still be going out.

We’re encouraging voters to be sure to register to vote. Today would be a great day to register, and they can do that at OregonVotes.gov to do the online registration at the Secretary of State’s office.

We have just over 281,000 voters actively registered and set to receive ballots. And so, as I say, it’s great for voters to register early so that that their ballots will be in the initial mailing on Oct. 14.

I do mean mailing in that ballots will be sent through the USPS.

With the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday, the vote-by-mail process for November in Oregon remains unchanged, and it will be business as usual with ballots being delivered to voters, which is so timely because military and overseas ballots are due to be mailed this Friday, 45 days before the election.

So everything just happens magically to meet our deadlines.

Approximately 2,200 ballots will be mailed to military and overseas ballots this Friday, and these voters will also be given the opportunity to, they will be contacted via email to have the option to use the electronic ballot delivery system that we have available for them to utilize.

Presenter: Commissioner Laurie Trieger:

Commissioner Laurie Trieger: Not so much a question unless you have a response, but just a comment to put out there. I understand there are some websites springing up that look like they’re a place to register to vote or check your registration, but are not legitimate.

So just the more we can restate what is the correct one for Oregon voters into the public record, I think the better and also to alert people that there are scams out there.

Presenter: Lane County Clerk Tommy Gong:

Tommy Gong (Lane County clerk): The official websites to go to would be the secretary of state’s website and for registration it would be OregonVotes.gov. There’s certainly the secretary of state’s website.

And for Lane County, it’s LaneCountyOR.gov/elections is how to get all information related to Lane County.

I will also just mention that the secretary of state did submit a request for emergency funding, to strengthen election security and voter access, that was approved last week at $1.25 million, which was including additional drop boxes throughout the state.

The use of what they call BallotTrax, which I’ll explain to you a bit. And then also some additional voter notifications cards to work with our voter maintenance process.

So with ballot boxes of the twenty, Lane County is slated for three. And as I was telling our state election director, Dena Dawson, doing one at this time and having it ready for Oct. 14 when our ballots go out is like asking for a miracle. To do three, you know, within this period of time, like four weeks, I deserve sainthood in that way!

So, anyways, we’re making the effort. You know, we replace some of our drop boxes earlier this year. So I have three boxes right now in the warehouse that I think I can deploy. So now I have to work with the district offices at the locations that we’re looking at to trying to see if we can actually implement things.

I might say in the coming weeks of some really neat things that we could do with drop boxes. And it’s one that I want to do, like a proof-of-concept for in the state of Oregon, first time ever. 

So if I can make it happen, I will have something to report back on in a later meeting.

The BallotTrax system is a process where the voter will register with BallotTrax and they can receive a text, an email, or even a phone message of where their ballot is: that their ballot has been sent, their ballot has been retrieved back when they send it back; and the ballot has been received by the Elections Office.

So that it brings more transparency for the voters to know where their ballot is in the process.

Now, this is in the situation when it goes through the Postal Service, that all of these tracking barcodes are utilized. If the voter uses the drop box, when they do come back to our office and we scan the ballots by the envelope scanner, it will also trigger and say that the ballot was received by the office.

Presenter: Commissioner Trieger:

Commissioner Laurie Trieger: So that already exists. You can log on and see where your ballot is. So this just adds the notification. (It adds a notification) instead of you having to go log—okay.

Tommy Gong (Lane County clerk): Yes. So this is one-time funding for this election. I understand there’s four or five counties that are currently using this in the state of Oregon. Lane County is not one. So we’ll be able to utilize this for the first time.

I do understand that the secretary of state’s office plans to continue requesting for this funding and make it a continual funding mechanism for the use of BallotTrax forevermore going forward.

And so that’s something that we’re hoping that that can happen. It’s a great tool. When I was in California, we had implemented it, and those who use it really appreciated knowing where their ballot was, knowing that we had received their ballot, getting a notification. 

So to bring that transparency to the voters in Oregon will be a great thing to have.

Lastly is that next Monday, Sept. 21, the Elections Office will be open to issue ballots over the counter. I’ll make sure I say this exactly right by my staff, ‘to issue ballots over the counter for those voters who will be out of town during the election.’

So it’s like an early pickup of your ballot, but it’s only in the situation that you won’t be in the area when ballots are being sent and being delivered, and that you could still participate in the election. So our office will be open for that.

We are anticipating that there will be questions from the public about, you know, all of the news that they’ve been hearing about and the concerns that they might have.  So we’re doing some contingency planning for that to handle the demand of the phone calls, voters that might be coming to our office. We’re planning to prepare for increased activity if that be the case. 

And we’re going to be monitoring our drop boxes to see if voters are going to be using those more frequently than the post office, and to also have additional pickups if that be the case. So we’re ready—ready to go for Nov. 3.

Presenter: Commissioner Heather Buch: 

Commissioner Heather Buch: I appreciate that. There’s obviously more anxiety, I think, about this upcoming election than has been in the past, a lot of it around mail-in balloting. And I think since the Supreme Court had made their decision yesterday, hopefully that will tamp down anxiety for that.

But yesterday or the day before, NPR did a large segment on what would happen in the event of ballot seizures in counties. And normally this would not even come to our radar, but we have seen this in the past in Georgia.

And they interviewed commissioners in different areas of the country, because the concern is, should that happen in the county and people are starting to send their ballots in and they not either reach the counter mechanism at the county level or at the state level, commissioners were concerned that residents would look at them and ‘Say, what’s happening with our ballots? Why aren’t they being counted? What are our procedures should a ballot seizure occur in an attempt to change whatever is happening at the electoral level?’

And I wondered, what are our procedures should something like that actually occur in the county? Obviously the state and the DOJ work on those things, but ultimately it’s the county’s responsibility to handle those ballots, count those ballots, and work with the authorities if something should happen.

Presenter: Tommy Gong:

Tommy Gong (Lane County, clerk): Thank you for that question. It’s a great question. And there have been a series of webinars and meetings with the secretary of state’s office, talking about those very things, and the coordination that we need to have, like with our county counsel.

And they went over different scenarios for us to consider, depending on the nature of the request or the, ‘the nature of the request’ is the best way to say it, the action that an organization might be taking have been vetted and worked with our county counsel.

So we’re coordinating those types of actions, those types of responses, requests coming our way. and so it’s been something that the state has really been looking into secretary of state’s office and coordinating with various legal measures and what our responses and giving us education in that way.

I should also say, you know, in terms of the public anxiety on things, we’re still going to do our best to educate the public of all the things that we do and have our office tour to the public, if they want to see firsthand the processes that we do.

We’re going to do a media day to give a lot of information to the media.

More recently, we’re working with some universities on engaging content creators to see if we could work with lifestyle content creators who will spread the word out to their followers about, you know, ‘Be sure you’re registered to vote and here’s how you do it and if you have any questions…’

We’re providing them a little bit of information. With more and more people using social media to get their news, you know, let’s try this endeavor and see if we can really have some reach to our public those avenues.

So we’re looking forward to seeing, you know, how much more we can move the mark in educating the public.

Presenter: Lane County elections officials say they’ll work with social media influencers to encourage voting. They are also racing to deploy three more ballot drop boxes before drop boxes open Oct. 14.