Secretary of State's Office

[November 15th, 2006] Before the 2006 election becomes a distant memory, here's one question about Oregon's vote-by-mail system that this week's Rogue, the Secretary of State's Office , must address before the next ballot:

Why are unaffiliated third parties allowed to collect ballots the night of the election?

Groups such as Our Oregon, NARAL and backers of the Portland Public Schools levy—all of whom had stakes in the election—collected ballots last Tuesday from voters who didn't want to wait in line to turn in their ballots at the Multnomah County Elections Division office.

While these volunteers held onto ballots for only a short time before bringing them into the election office, letting well-intentioned people intercept ballots even temporarily is an idea that falls somewhere between dumb and an invitation for abuse.

(Our Oregon spokeswoman Patty Wentz says her union-backed group hadn't initially planned to collect ballots but worried that long lines and bad weather might mean voters would give up on voting.)

Mary Conley, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's Office, says there's currently no move to crack down on ballots being handled by people other than voters and elections officials, or to hire more election staff for election night.

"We always encourage people to think of their ballot as their mortgage check and treat it with the same care," Conley explained.

But there oughta be a law tougher than requiring volunteer ballot collectors to stand at least 100 feet away from ballot boxes and to label their own collection boxes as "unofficial."

Multnomah County Elections Director John Kauffman says his office received numerous complaints on election night from people questioning the legality of volunteer ballot collectors and wanting to know why the law hadn't been changed. "Election officials in the state have tried to make it illegal," Kauffman says, "but every year it doesn't go through."

Message from the Rogue desk to the Secretary of State's Office:

Try a little harder.