Mail glitch returns gas tax ballots to some voters

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, March 8, 2016

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Some mail-in ballots destined for the Deschutes County Clerk’s office for today’s election were mistakenly returned to voters after malfunctioning U.S. Postal Service equipment in Portland experienced an address mix-up.

Based on the “three or four calls” the Deschutes County Clerk’s Office received Monday, County Clerk Nancy Blankenship estimated that fewer than 10 ballots were actually returned to the voters who had filled them out and mailed them back. The Postal Service caught the issue early. Postal workers were pulling by hand the sealed ballots that would have otherwise mistakenly been returned to voters and were delivering them to the county’s election office, she said.

“We got some calls this morning, and we contacted the post office, and they had been aware of it for a couple days,” Blankenship said.

“They’re manually watching for all the ballots. Our ballots have a nice bright blue bar on the top and bottom, so they’re easy to spot,” she said.

The only issue on the ballot today in Deschutes County is a proposal to raise the gas tax in the city of Bend by 5 cents a gallon to pay for road repairs.

Voters who did get their ballots back in the mail should take them to one of the county’s drop-off points, Blankenship said. Any ballots being processed in Portland on Monday night were expected to be rerouted to ballot drop-off points in Multnomah County and then delivered to Deschutes County today. The county mailed 50,000 ballots in total, and Blankenship said about 50 percent of them had been returned to the clerk’s office as of Monday afternoon.

Postal Service spokesman Peter Hass said that a processing machine read the envelopes incorrectly and sent ballots back to voters.

“The bottom line is that we apologize to the customers that were faced with this situation, and we’re working with the county to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said Monday. “Every ballot that’s been mailed will get to the county’s hands for counting tomorrow.”

Nancy McGuiness said she and her husband received their mistakenly returned ballots Friday.

“I brought it to the post office to show them the envelope with the ballot in it, and the clerk took it and set it off to the side,” she said, adding that she asked for it back so she could deliver it to the county herself. “(The post office) said it’s happened to others and that they’re aware of what’s going on; they’re holding all the ballots that are being returned to people, and they said they’ll take care of it.”

In a news release, the Deschutes County Clerk’s Office instructed voters who had their ballots returned to take them to one of the county’s three drop-off points before 8 p.m. today.

— Reporter: 541-617-7829,

awest@bendbulletin.com

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