Oregon’s Vote-By Mail System Audited in Multnomah County

While these government audits are fairly useless, and rarely ask tough questions, the Multnomah County audit did provide this interesting info:

Elections can improve its inspection processes by requiring consultation with other board members before a ballot is enhanced. According to state guidelines, the responsibility for determining voter intent lies with the inspection board, under the guidance of the Elections Director. When a question arises, guidelines state that a team of at least two board members of different political party affiliations should work together to determine voter intent. If the inspection board agrees on the voter’s intent, the ballot should be enhanced or duplicated to reflect that intent and the enhanced or duplicated ballot should then be counted. If they do not agree, the ballot should be tallied as is.

According to Elections, markings with obvious voter intent are the largest part of enhancing ballots and do not require consultation. However, this leaves the important task of determining whether there is a question about voter intent up to an individual. Only rarely did we observe a board member consulting another before enhancing a ballot. This creates a risk for error and undermines the intent of the state requirement for multiple party inspection. We recommend that Elections have at least two board members of different political parties agree on all enhancements.

Um, ok, so individual workers are determining voter intent for themselves without multi-party observation. Nice!!!!!! Not only is ballot stuffing simple in vote-by mail systems, as is vote-buying, granny farming and myriad other fraudulent acts, but even this sham audit mentions at least one serious problem… even though there are dozens of problems with absentee and mail ballots. And I love that language of this audit regarding this problem in that it, “creates a risk for error and undermines the intent of the state requirement for multiple party inspection.” Let me restate that in clearer language, “This creates a risk for FRAUD and blatantly violates Oregon State law requiring multi-party observation and inspection of the ballot duplication process.” See that wasn’t so hard.

 

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