The life of a Lane County ballot – before and after Election Day 

In Lane County, a fortress of technology and old-fashioned accountability is marshaled to keep ballots as secure as possible. 

From start to finish, election workers carefully track a ballot’s chain of custody, working hand-in-hand across party lines to increase accountability. Color-coded bins show whether scanned envelopes with ballots have signatures that match those on file or need a closer look.  Work areas are livestreamed online, offering the public a chance to view the work of the elections department as ballots arrive.

Lane County’s May 19 primary election comes amid heightened scrutiny of vote-by-mail systems in Oregon and across the nation. President Donald Trump, specifically, has targeted vote-by-mail, declaring in the past, without evidence, that the process  is ripe for fraud. An executive order, which faces a legal challenge from Oregon and other states, also would change vote-by-mail. It would require the U.S. Postal Service to only send ballots for federal elections to people whom federal agencies deem eligible to vote. 

“Every ballot is tied to a particular voter,” said Barbara Smith Warner, a former Oregon state legislator and senior advisor to the Institute for Responsive Government, a policy think tank that is focused on making government more accessible. “So that whole myth about, ‘Oh, you can copy ballots and dump a bunch of them in.’ No, you can’t, because every ballot is tied to an individual voter through barcodes. And we have signature verification. Your vote is matched to your legal signature.”

Beyond the national headlines, vote-by-mail has a long legacy in Oregon, which in 2000 became the first state in the nation to conduct elections entirely by mail.

As of Thursday, April 23, Lane County had 284,477 registered voters — a number that is expected to rise by Tuesday, the deadline to register for the May 19 election.In Lane County, voter registration stands at 284,477 and is expected to rise. About 2,000 of those already went out to military and overseas voters and another 1,242 went to out-of-state voters. The rest of the ballots will go out to voters April 30.

Not every ballot is the same, of course. Lane County has different precincts, districts and races based on geography. What’s more, each region of the county has nonpartisan and party-centric ballots because some voters participate in closed Democratic and Republican primaries and others voters aren’t affiliated with any political party.

All that means Lane County is sending out 448 separate styles of ballots this primary cycle. 

Voting options 

When it comes to voting, Lane County residents have a couple of options. 

They can leave their ballot in any of the county’s 21 secure ballot drop boxes at any point until 8 p.m. May 19. 

If they want to mail their ballot, they can still do that with the postage-paid envelope the county provides. But given the slowness of the U.S. Postal Service these days, Lane County Clerk Tommy Gong – and, for that matter, the secretary of state  —  recommends people mail back their ballots by May 12 or sooner – a full week before Election Day. 

Gong says that for residents who opt to use the county’s drop boxes – there’s an advantage: The county – and taxpayers by extension – won’t have to pay for the return postage. 

A ballot postmarked by Election Day and received by county elections offices within the 7-day grace period are valid, but due to changes at the U.S. Postal Service, mail is not necessarily postmarked the same day it is mailed, said Connor Radnovich, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office. If a voter must use postal service within seven days of the election, they should go to the counter of the post office and ask for a manual postmark, he said.

Regardless of how people drop off their ballots, the county keeps close taps on the work ahead.

“We go through this whole process to account for every ballot,” Gong said in an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield. 

Here’s a look at what that system looks like:

Receiving ballots 

Two-person teams of election workers travel to collect ballots from locked drop  boxes and through regular stops at the United States Post Office. As part of the security protocols, the two are never members of the same major political party. 

Ballots from the drop boxes and the post office are transferred to clear plastic tote boxes. 

Team members lock the tote boxes with seals that have unique serial numbers. Those numbers are recorded on a log to track the box’s chain of custody. Both workers sign the custody log.

In the receiving area of the elections office, a team of election workers – also never of the same political party – enters the serial numbers onto the chain of custody log and verifies that they match. 

The location tracking board is updated, so staff and observers can tell where ballots were collected. 

The clear plastic totes with ballots inside are moved into the secure sorting room. 

Sorting ballots 

Election workers take the ballots out of the totes, working on ballots that arrive from one location at a time. 

Workers put the ballots on mail trays. Any mail that is not a ballot is removed, such as if the post office sent an envelope in error. 

Ballots are run through the sorter machines.

The sorter only opens ballots when the envelope signature is matched to the registration card signature through an Automated Signature Verification (ASV) system. The Automated Signature Verification software that compares signatures on file in voter registration records to the ballot envelope signature. It looks for signature features that are not visible to the naked eye, such as subtle but distinct shapes and swirls.

Ballots with valid signatures are placed on green mail trays in batches of up to 200. 

Ballots that don’t pass the automated signature check are placed in bins for additional review and stored in yellow mail trays. 

Signature review 

It’s not the end of the road for ballots on yellow trays. First, an election worker will attempt to verify the signature. If they are unable, the ballot is bumped up to an election worker for further review.

If the election workers cannot match the signatures, or the voter forgot to sign the return envelope, the county sends the voter a letter and provides them a chance to “cure” the ballot and show that it is authentic. That must happen within 21 days of the election. (Remember how reporters on TV all call ballot results “unofficial” on election night? Part of the reason is situations like this always lead to changes and tweaks weeks after Election Day.)

Deconstructing ballots

First things first: It’s called “deconstruction” — not destruction. 

Like before, teams of workers – never the same party affiliation – work together. One will collect a green tray, the one with signatures that have been verified. Both team members working together will distribute the ballot envelopes between the team, with the voter information face down.

The ballot is separated from the envelope. During that step, workers look for potential problems — two ballots in one envelope, empty envelopes and damaged ballots, for example.  Any ballots with those problems are placed in red mail trays. 

Workers unfold the ballots, looking for ripped or damaged ballots and cases where the voter’s picks may not be properly recorded.

Ballots are counted so that they have a number to reconcile. No results of races are determined at this point. Floor supervisors can help address problems or answer questions.

When a batch is completed, deconstruction team members will prepare empty envelopes for storage and place flattened ballots in the ballot box.

Also important: They will write the total number of hand-counted ballots down. At this point, they’re not counting totals for the outcomes in elections, just keeping track of the counts.

Reconciling ballots 

The workers take damaged ballots, empty envelopes or envelopes with two ballots and remove or “outstack” them from the batch. 

The next steps for outstacked ballots vary based on the circumstances. 

For example, If an envelope has two ballots, the log is updated to show the total number of ballots to be counted is one less than expected.  The outstacked ballot envelope is stored in a sealed container with a chain of custody log. 

A torn ballot is stored in a sealed container with a chain of custody log and put into a new batch of adjudicated ballots to be counted. Those ballots are reconciled with the original batch to ensure that every “outstacked” ballot is counted. 

Scanning and testing ballots 

Now, the fun part starts. The counting room processes one box of ballots at a time.

Ballots go through a voting system ballot scanner. With each batch, election workers write the number of ballots the scanner counts on the ballot box label.

Remember the deconstruction team’s hand-counting? If the scanner counts’ figure is different from the hand-counted figure, the batch is run again through the scanner. If the counts still don’t match, staffers in the counting room will work with the reconciliation team to “troubleshoot” what went wrong and write a notation in the ballot reconciliation log. 

“Every vote count” isn’t just a slogan. It’s a way of doing business in the counting room.

During the scanning, unscannable ballots that cannot be counted are stored and the log is reconciled. 

When ballots are scanned, a ballot box count report is generated with the number of ballots. That number is logged to ensure the full, exact number of ballots for each batch is counted. 

Ballot tabulation 

In the ballot counting room, a tabulation computer tracks the scanned vote results. Data from the scanners goes to the ballot tabulation computer through an isolated, secure network. That computer is not connected to any other network or the internet, much to the dismay of overseas hackers. 

“Everything is contained in this,” Gong said. “There’s no networking going on to outside sources.”

The tabulation computer prints out the results. They also are downloaded to an external drive and transferred to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Elections Division website through a secure file transfer protocol. 

Single-use thumb drives connect to the internet to transmit the information to the secretary of state. That means if the data is ever compromised, the underlying system is not part of it or online and county officials could get another thumb drive. 

Judgment calls  

Remember those torn and damaged ballots? They still get a chance to count. Ballots with written, unclear markings get a look, as do undervotes, which occur when voters don’t pick as many choices as allowed on a ballot. 

A bipartisan team of two election judges will determine voter intent where possible with damaged ballots. The team also records the choices of unscannable ballots.

Devon Ashbridge, a county spokesperson, said secretary of state guidance plays a key role in how this works, a process also called “adjudication.”

“They have laid out how you adjudicate,” Ashbridge said. “So it’s not up to that individual team to decide based on their own feelings and the vibe of the day. They’re comparing it to specific guidance from the secretary of state that if someone has done this, this is how you must count it.” 

Storing ballots 

After the counting ends, ballots go into storage in sealed containers for at least 22 months. That leaves a record and paper trail that is available for future audits and any legal challenges.

Access the system

Registration information: The last day for new voters to register to vote is 21 days before an election. In this case, that’s Tuesday, April 28. You can visit the Oregon Secretary of State’s page to register to vote. You also can register in person at the county’s elections office, 275 W 10th Ave., Eugene, by 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 28. The office is open from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays.

If you are already registered and want to update your voter information, such as your party affiliation, you can do that until 8 p.m. Election Day and still vote. Here’s where you can update your registration. Unaffiliated voters have elections they can vote in as well, like the Lane County commissioner races and ballot measures. But primaries for Democratic and Republican candidates require voter affiliation with the party. 

For more information about voting in Lane County, visit: https://www.lanecounty.org/cms/one.aspx?pageId=4081147