The wait to see if Kurt Schrader is upset hangs on counting bad ballots

Observers and insiders recognized Congressman Kurt Schrader could have a problem holding on to his seat in this year’s election.

Between redistricting that cut out about half the voters in the district he’s represented for a decade, a progressive opponent with name recognition from previous campaigns and Schrader’s controversial vote against the first version of the American Rescue Plan, Schrader faced his greatest challenge since being voted into the House in 2009.

But no one could have predicted his campaign would have this kind of challenge.

Schrader, of Canby, has trailed attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who lives in Terrebonne, by a margin of about 20 percentage points since the initial results were released on election night, May 17.

Schrader hasn’t conceded and doesn’t appear likely to anytime soon.

The county that contains about half of the voters in the district, Clackamas County, has had major problems with its vote tabulation due to misprinted ballots. Its county clerk, Sherry Hall, offered no timetable Friday for when it would count all the outstanding ballots other than it would be done by the required certification date of June 13.

Schrader leads the votes in Clackamas County, but with McLeod-Skinner leading by so much in the rest of the district, it matters less and less with each new ballot counted.

And now she’s edging closer to the monumental upset of the seven-time congressman.

“If I were her campaign I would be moving from cautious optimism to optimistic optimism,” Pacific University politics professor Jim Moore said.

Redrawn district for Kurt Schrader leads to uncertainty

When Oregon received an additional seat in the House of Representatives after the 2020 census, the state legislature redrew the districts.

It changed the boundaries of the Fifth District, removing Salem and the Oregon Coast while adding Bend and Linn County. About half the former district was drawn out of it.

Democrats hold a 6% edge in voter registrations over Republicans in the redrawn district.

McLeod-Skinner, who formerly ran for Congress in the Second District and for Secretary of State, filed to run for the Fifth District despite living in Terrebonne, which is in the second district.

But she painted herself as a progressive option to Schrader’s centrist image.

“And yes, technically I’m running to the left of him, but he’s gone so far to the right that most of the time when I’m talking to people, they’re surprised he’s an actual Democrat,” she said in April.

The money poured into Schrader’s campaign to try to keep him in office, and his campaign vastly outspent McLeod-Skinner’s.

His campaign spent $3.3 million as of April 27, according to Federal Elections Commission data. Political action committees have spent about another $1 million to support Schrader and nearly $200,000 in opposition to McLeod-Skinner.

Her campaign spent $579,000.

McLeod-Skinner received endorsements from the Democratic party chapters in Clackamas, Deschutes, Linn and Marion counties. Schrader was endorsed by Pres. Joe Biden.

When initial results were released by the Secretary of State on May 17, McLeod-Skinner was in the lead. By a lot. But there was a problem.

Clackamas County will take weeks to complete its count

Clackamas County ran the standard “logic and accuracy test” on May 3, Hall said. That tests the machines to make sure they’re counting ballots accurately.

Hall said the ballots used in that test were printed in-house. Those tested fine.

When the county started putting in ballots that were printed by a vendor it’s used for a decade to print ballots, it noticed a problem.

But it didn’t do anything about it.

“I didn’t respond to this with the urgency that I should have,” said Hall, who is up for reelection in November. “This was something we have never seen before. It’s the reaction and the learning. We should have done it probably the next day.”

Hall said the county uses the Hart Verity scanning service. She said the company stopped certifying printers of ballots. The county used the same company it had to print ballots for the past 10 years without a problem. Then this happened. She said on Friday that the county won’t be using that same printer again.

Hall said the county won’t know how many ballots were impacted by the errors until they are all fed through the scanning machines, but so far it’s about 2/3 of them.

Each ballot that is faulty when scanned through the machines needs to be hand copied to a new one, a time-consuming process.

The majority of misprinted ballots were for Democratic voters.

On the Republican side, Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s lead against challenger Jimmy Crumpacker has increased as more ballots have been counted in Clackamas, and the race has been called by several outlets in Chavez-DeRemer’s favor, though not by The Associated Press.

As of Friday afternoon, 10,691 Republican ballots had been tallied in Clackamas County, while only 4,069 Democrat ballots had.

County leaders and Secretary of State Shemia Fagan openly blamed Hall for not accepting help sooner once she recognized there was a problem.

The county has reassigned about 200 people from other departments to assist in the count.

Hall said Marion and Washington counties have offered to supply election workers, as has Clark County, Washington and the Oregon Secretary of State’s office. She said she will accept the help.

Results of the election have to be certified by June 13. Hall said on Friday that the county would have it completed by then. It was the only timeline she mentioned Friday.

“Don’t be surprised if we get it done sooner,” she said.

Earlier in the week, she blamed media coverage for slowing down the process.

And now she won’t estimate when votes will be reported, except for saying more results will be reported at 7 p.m. each day.

“It’s certainly a disaster out in Clackamas County,” Moore said. “That’s unprecedented.”

Numbers point to Jamie McLeod-Skinner, but more needed

Of the 47,986 votes counted for the race as of Friday afternoon, about 10% came from Clackamas County.

In Clackamas County, home to Schrader, he held a 55.4% to 43.8% advantage.

But McLeod-Skinner held a commanding 70% to 28% lead in her home of Deschutes County and was up 59% to 40% in Multnomah County. Schrader led 52% to 46% in Linn County and 54% to 44% in Marion County.

Moore said if the votes in Clackamas County continue to trend as they have so far, McLeod Skinner will win the election.

He said he will wait until at least 20% of nearly 47,000 Democratic ballots in the county have been counted – about 10% have been so far – before he calls the race for her, however.

“Data, we need data,” Moore said.

McLeod-Skinner’s campaign has been optimistic since election night.

“Every vote must be counted in this election, and we are awaiting the final results from the county offices,” her campaign said in a statement Friday. “Most of the uncounted votes are in Clackamas County. We expect all county offices to uphold the integrity of our elections, including compliance with their elections security plans and providing equal access to our elections observers, as it builds trust in our election process. We look forward to hearing the final results. Above all, the state must ensure that every Oregonian’s vote is counted.”

Schrader’s campaign has been mostly quiet since election night. It has released a couple statements, but none have been concessions.

“We appreciate the monumental work done by the employees of Clackamas County in making sure all election ballots are being legally verified and counted,” Schrader’s campaign said in a statement Friday. “Voters in Clackamas County have a right to expect that the Election Division leadership maintains the highest standards needed to make the voting process accurate and without concern.

“We will continue to closely monitor the work being done at the County to ensure every vote returned to Clackamas County will be counted and that the ballot of every voter is tallied and reported.”

When will this be done?

Fagan released a statement Friday saying she had asked for a written plan on how the incoming resources will be used to assist in the count and for a timeline of when it will be completed.

Hall said Friday that she didn’t yet have a timeline for completing the ballot counting and likely won’t have one until Monday.

“Unfortunately, Clackamas County Elections did not respond to this crisis with appropriate urgency during the past two weeks,” Fagan said in a statement on Friday. “Voters and candidates deserve timely and predictable results, which we have not seen so far.”

McLeod-Skinner’s campaign filed a complaint with the Secretary of State’s office about the Clackamas County elections’ office, alleging the Schrader campaign was given early access to observe voting tabulation.

In the complaint, it states that an elections observer from Schrader’s campaign had signed in to observe at 7:30 a.m. Thursday. That is an hour before the office was supposed to be open. The McLeod-Skinner campaign observer couldn’t get in until 8:30 a.m.

“We’re taking that complaint very seriously,” Hall said. “No one should have ever been in our area to observe because we weren’t starting that early on the other days.”

Democrats are left wondering if they’ll have to support progressive McLeod-Skinner or centrist Schrader in December.

“It speaks to two things,” Moore said. “It speaks to the fact that when you redo the borders of districts, the incumbency disappears in the new part of the district.

“The second thing is Schrader has really pinned his congressional career at being one of the few centrists in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party here seems to be moving to a progressive way.”

Bill Poehler covers Marion County for the Statesman Journal. He can be reached at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: The wait to see if Kurt Schrader is upset hangs on counting bad ballots