The Black Hole Of May 18 Primary Election Write-In Votes
Don't Expect To Learn Anything About Them
Readers may recall that we endorsed two write-in votes for the May 18 primary -- one for the District Attorney race (we endorsed James Jahar Perez), and one for the Commissioner No. 4 position on Portland City Council (we endorsed None Of The Above). All we knew from the election results was that there were 3,398 write-in votes for District Attorney and 1,965 write-in votes for Commissioner No. 4.
Obviously, the question then become: How do we get a break-down of specific write-in votes for each of these races?
As governed by Oregon elections law, when elections divisions tally votes, they count the write-in slot for any given race as a single block -- in essence a vote for "write-in." Only if and when the write-in votes become relevant to the outcome of an election is that block of write-in votes broken down into tallies for each specific write-in.
How then do campaign watchers obtain a break-down of write-in votes when they aren't statistically relevant to the outcome of an election? As it turns out, there appears to be no easy process for this.
No, the elections division does not simply pull out all the ballots which contain write-ins for a given race and then go through them to determine the specifics.
According to John Kauffman of the Multnomah County Election Division: "Actually, someone would sit at a table with all the ballots for a given precinct and look through all of them to find those containing write-ins."
Yes, that's right. One must methodically go through every ballot from a given precinct by hand, finding all the write-in votes.
In the case of the District Attorney race, this means going through every ballot from 129 different precincts and finding the ones with write-ins for that race. In the case of the Commissioner No. 4 race, it means going through every ballot from 93 different precincts and finding the ones with write-ins for that race.
Apparently, the option does not exist to have their machines pull out all the ballots for write-ins in a given race and then do a hand sort and tally of the specifics. The entire process must be done by hand -- at least that's what appears to be communicated by Kauffman.
Barring, then, the assemblage of a veritable army of volunteer vote-counters, it does not appear particularly likely that we will be able to easily determine the break-downs of the write-in votes for these two campaigns -- let alone just how many happen to coincide (whether through chance or deliberate action) with our endorsements.
May 26, 2004 at 04:31 PM
I bet I could get an army of people...
May 26, 2004 at 05:16 PM
There's an area ripe for reform. There must be a way to have the machines kick out the write-ins for inspection. Of course, the way government works, it would probably cost $1 million and take five years to accomplish...
May 27, 2004 at 05:45 PM
I never write-in because I know they are neither counted nor reported. But have you ever changed your registration in Multnomah County? I have a few times, and it rarely goes through correctly the first time. The record took three or four attempts. One time I had to practically make threats to get a ballot.
I do not well trust the competence of the local elections' office, though I am grateful we have manual ballots rather than Diebold machines.
On an entirely different note -- Mr. b!X or Mr. Bogdanski, have either of you checked into whether Oregon has more of these alleged 'ties to terrorism' than most states, and if so, why? With another story in the news today, the question asks itself. And it seems to be national, not just local, news.
May 27, 2004 at 05:52 PM
I never write-in because I know they are neither counted nor reported.
This is only partly true. Write-ins are counted as a block called "write-ins" and are reported with the results as part of the results, meaning the percentage of write-ins does count towards the total vote count in the election. What they don't do is provide a break-down of specific write-in votes unless it becomes necessary for the proper outcome of the election.
May 27, 2004 at 11:08 PM
I'm a little surprised that they don't tally the individual write-ins. I'm not surprised they don't publish the names on the write-ins - who wants to see that "Bart Simpson", "Che Guevarra", and "Hugh Jass" got votes.
May 28, 2004 at 11:07 AM
...who wants to see that "Bart Simpson", "Che Guevarra", and "Hugh Jass" got votes.
Me.
I prefer the insanity to the reality.
May 28, 2004 at 01:27 PM
I don't know how the legal requirements or even the mechanics of it worked, but I've seen write-in votes tallied and individually reported for local elections when I lived in Virginia. They weren't publicized but they made it into election certification reports.
May 28, 2004 at 01:33 PM
Apparently we don't do that here.
June 07, 2004 at 10:50 PM
I'd like to suggest a write-in campaign for the Comm. # 4 spot in November. The May Primary outcome in that race was a perfect example of the need to put at least the top two candidates on the Nov. ballot, given Leonards low majority. With 6 more months and many more people in Nov., it's a different ball game. IMHO