Tag Archive for 'Elections'

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Q&A with our New Elections Director

Published on October 15, 2009 in Elections and Q&A. 0 Comments Tags: .

On Aug. 31, Stephen N. Trout became the new director of the Oregon Elections Division. An attorney, Trout came to Oregon after a national search and brought with him extensive expertise in election law and election administration at the state and local levels of government. Here are a few questions for Steve about the state of the Oregon Elections Division.


Q. What are biggest challenges facing Oregon elections?

A. We face a series of changing rules at the state and federal level with limited resources. We also face significant changes in technology, like the challenges in developing our online voter registration system.

Q. How will that work?

A. We’re in the process right now of developing the system and we expect to have it in place by March 1, 2010, in time to register for the May primary.

It will allow eligible Oregonians to register online but only if they have a signature on file with the state Motor Vehicle Services Division. In other words, you’ll only be able to register online if you have a driver’s license or some kind or a state ID card.

Q. What’s the advantage?

A. First of all, it’s going to be cheaper because there will be less paperwork at the state level. It’s going to make registration easier for Oregonians in the military. It will be easier for the homebound or those with disabilities. And it’s going to be easier for young people who spend a lot of time online. It’s going to make registration easier for everyone.

Q. Will it be secure?

A. It will be very secure. The signature will be the validating element. It carries the same security protections as those in place now with paperwork. Even more, I should say. When registering on paper, you have to swear under penalty of a class C felony the information is accurate. When registering online, you cannot fill out the information until you’ve sworn that oath and a violation carries a penalty of five years in prison and a $125,000 fine.

Q. Do we have a secure voting system?

A. I have full confidence in the security of all of our voting systems. Anyone could break into Fort Knox if there weren’t any guards, and voting systems are no different. Our voting system guards are our laws and regulations, and rules and procedures. We are constantly updating them to maintain the highest level of security possible. The counties submit security plans to our office which we review to make sure that their voting processes and equipment are as secure as possible. Our most important job is to provide the citizens of Oregon with the most secure and accurate voting systems possible.

Q. What are your long-term goals for the Elections Division?

A. We want to continue to be at the forefront of administering elections in this country. We’ll use all the resources at our disposal to make the system as efficient as possible and to make sure every eligible voter has the opportunity to cast a ballot in as accurate and secure a manner as possible.

Q. How good is our system compared to other states?

A. Our vote-by-mail is the model for the nation and we’ll continue to improve on that. Our system is one of the cleanest, most efficient, most accurate and most secure in the country and we intend to keep it that way.

Want to vote in the Nov. 3 elections? Register now!

Published on October 13, 2009 in Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Today is the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 3 elections.

Voters all over the state will make choices in how to administer cities, schools and a multitude of local service districts. These aren’t issues that will likely make the statewide radar, but they do matter a lot to those who they will affect. And that is what this election is about; communities making critical choices on vital issues that will affect them for years to come.

Perhaps the biggest ballot measure in the state this fall is Central Oregon Community College’s request for $41.6 million in bonds for campus improvements. Voters in all or parts of six central Oregon counties will decide the fate of the bonds.

Most of the remaining requests concern local services; fire districts, water districts, library districts, animal protection districts, amongst others. For instance, the city of Bandon is asking for money for police services, while the Shangri-La Water District in Lane County is asking for money for system repairs. The city of Ashland wants to main a tax on food and beverages to pay for waste-water services and finally the Rogue River Rural Fire Protection District is asking for money to maintain services.

Close on the heels of the registration deadline is the day when ballots start going in the mail. That will begin on Friday.

And remember to have your ballots in the hands of your local elections office no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3. Postmarks don’t count.

Referenda, qualified

Published on October 8, 2009 in Ballot Initiatives and Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

In an earlier blog, we mentioned two referenda that were circulating in hopes of getting on the 2010 special election ballot. Today the Elections Division has announced that both the petitions referring both HB 2649 and HB 3405 to voters have indeed received the  required amount of signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Measure 66, which will refer HB 2649 to voters gathered 98,842 valid signatures, plenty to satisfy the constitutional requirement of 55,179 needed. HB 2649, which passed in the 2009 Legislative session, concerns the State’s personal income tax.

The other referendum, now titled Measure 67 received 99,471 valid signatures, a full 80.7% of the 123,324 signatures accepted for verification. The measure will refer HB 3405, a bill which pertains to corporate income taxes, to Oregon’s voters.

This is hardly the first time that the ‘Oregon System‘ has been used to give Oregon’s voters the opportunity to repeal enrolled legislation, but it will be the first time since 2004 that Oregon has voted on  statewide referenda.

To be eligible to vote on these referenda Oregonians will need to be
registered to vote no later than January 5, 2010. Please contact our  Elections division with questions about getting registered.

Want to Run for Office? Elections is Here to Help!

Published on October 2, 2009 in Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
Copyright: Imagezoo/Superstock

Copyright: Imagezoo/Superstock

Have you ever considered running for elected office? With the 2010 Election a mere year and change away, now is the time to think about filing for candidacy and our elections division is here to help!

The first thing any potential candidate should do is head on over to our elections division’s website and grab the State Candidate’s Manual for either major or minor political party affiliations. You’ll find all of the necessary forms there as well. With these manuals and forms, you’ll have all the information you need to get you on your way to filing for candidacy.

After filing, you may ask yourself, “What comes next?” Well, our Elections division has you covered there too, providing you with some basic information on a number of relevant topics; perhaps most importantly a “Quick Guide” on Campaign Finance, a Campaign Finance Manual and a Users Guide for ORESTAR, Oregon’s campaign filing system. Understanding campaign finance law can be daunting, so be sure to read through the materials carefully…and often, to make sure you’re in compliance. Also, be sure to check back with Elections January 1, 2010 as these manuals will be updated1 to reflect changes in the law made during the 2009 legislative session.

As any elected official will tell you, this is just the beginning of a long, sometimes arduous journey towards public office. You still have to: consider hiring a staff, start fund-raising, attend events, round up endorsements, and knock on doors, just to name a few things.

Still, if you think you’re ready, Elections is here to provide you with all the information you need and answer any questions you may have along the way.

The first day to file for office was September 10th of this year and all filings must be received by Elections on March 9, 2010.

[1] As a cost saving measure, the manuals will only be available online in both HTML and PDF formats starting in 2010.

Taking Care of the Voter Registration Rolls

Published on September 25, 2009 in Elections and HAVA. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Keeping track of voter registration information is serious business as it is vital to insuring that our elections run as smoothly and securely as possible. Until recently each of Oregon’s 36 county elections offices had their own voter registration list. However, the Help America Vote Act, which was passed by the United States Congress in 2002, required that all states develop “a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list defined, maintained, and administered at the State level that contains the name and registration information of every legally registered voter in the State.” In 2006 our elections division did just that, putting together the Oregon Central Voter Registration (OCVR) database; and the system has born tremendous fruit. Where counties previously had problems with tasks like tracking down duplicate registrations, they can now access voter registration information across county lines through the OCVR database instantaneously in order to perform a variety of cross checking tasks.

In August of 2008 the State of Oregon and State of Washington undertook a pilot project, which sought to build on the success of OCVR implementation by comparing voter registration databases across state lines to check for potential duplicates. A fantastic overview of this Oregon-Washington pilot project written by the National Academies of Science can be found here.

On September 4th of this year, both Oregon and Washington sent out a letter (pictured below) informing voters that they may be registered to vote in both states. Attached to the letter is a short form that allows voters to indicate whether they were indeed registered in a second state and to cancel that invalid registration.

Dual Reg (OR)

Dual Reg Letters (WA)

So far, about 7,000 letters – 4,500 in Washington and 2,500 in Oregon – have been sent to the matches who came up during the check, but if you have just registered in Oregon after being registered in Washington, or vice-versa, you may want to print a copy of the letter, fill it out and send it in to your respective elections division for them to insure you aren’t registered to vote in both states on accident.

This project will help us perform a key function; tightening up our voter rolls to make sure that they are as accurate as possible. It is just another way that Oregon elections is staying ahead of the curve nationally with innovative projects.

Referenda Roundup

Published on September 24, 2009 in Ballot Initiatives and Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/atlas/Images/Glossary/Referendum.jpgIn most years, the humble referendum pales in popularity to its gregarious cousin the citizen initiative.

Since 1902, the citizen initiative has given birth to all kinds of changes to our social and political structure, including the vote for women, mandated seat belt use and reworking of our tax structure. There have been 348 initiatives on Oregon ballots and we’ve passed 118 of them.

The referendum doesn’t always have the same dramatic flare or occasional high profile.  But it allows citizens to repeal an action by the Legislature, a vital check on our State government. In the last century, we have voted on 62 referenda, the most recent referendum in 2004 when voters rejected a temporary tax increase.

This year, however, petitioners are circulating petitions that could place four different referenda before voters next year. Referenda being circulated would refer HB 2649 (personal income tax) and HB 3405 (corporate income tax) to a special election held on January 26, 2010.  Two other referenda would refer to voters HB 2001 (transportation funding and gas tax) and HB 2010 (health care provider tax) to the May 2010 primary ballot.

To qualify for the ballot, a referendum needs the signatures of 4 percent of the number of voters who cast ballots in the most recent gubernatorial election. That translates to signatures from 55,179 registered Oregon voters.

The deadline for all four of the petition drives is 5 p.m. on Sept. 26.

Investigating Signature Gathering: A Proactive Look at the Initiative System

Published on September 22, 2009 in Elections and Secretary Brown. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Here is my recent Op-Ed, re-posted from The Oregonian:

September 22, 2009, 8:22AM

I  ran for office last year promising voters I’d fight to restore integrity to our citizen initiative and referendum system.

The citizen initiative is deeply ingrained in Oregon’s political DNA. It has changed our culture and has become one of the biggest drivers in the state budget, from Measure 5 property tax limitations to Measure 11 mandatory-minimum sentencing.

Everywhere I go, I hear worries that measures get on the ballot through illegal methods such as fraud and forgery. The issue has clearly concerned the Legislature as well. Lawmakers passed major reforms in 2007 and again in 2009.

To ensure measures reach the ballot through legal and legitimate means, the Legislature authorized a pilot project to make spot checks from August until the end of 2009 to make sure petitioners are in compliance with the law. Contrary to what some may claim, the spot checks are not targeting the referenda on the tax measures passed in the last session by the Legislature. They’re also observing petitioners for some of the seven other citizen initiatives approved to circulate. When the signatures for the referenda are handed in on Sept. 25, investigators will continue their work through the end of the year.

So just what are the observers looking for? Violations, both major and minor. Minor violations might include not using authorized forms or the failure of a signature gatherer to personally witness a signature, as the law requires. Major violations involve bribing a voter to sign or forging names onto a petition. The observers also will make sure no one interferes with voters interested in signing a petition. New reforms make it a felony to hinder or delay these encounters. Investigators are watching for that, too.

It’s always easy to assume the worst. Indeed, critics — including The Oregonian’s editorial board — question the efficacy of the investigations based on just the first two weeks of a nearly five-month project. But this is a straightforward, nonintrusive observation of the process, and it’s already made a difference. In one recent training, a trainer told attendees that he would “do everything by the book” as a result of investigators being present.

The investigators are simply observing what is going on in full view of the world. They do not interfere with the interaction between signature gatherers and signers, and they talk to the signature gatherers only when approached by the circulator.

I’m hesitant to characterize our findings thus far because we’re only a few weeks into a five-month project. But so far, with more than 300 contacts with circulators, we’ve seen no major violations. We found some relatively minor transgressions by one citizen initiative campaign, but they appeared to be oversights and were handled with a phone call to the chief petitioner.

When the observers’ work is complete, we will provide a full report to the Legislature.

I hope we find few problems. I hope everyone gathering signatures knows what the law requires and observers and gatherers alike treat everyone with dignity and respect.

Until recently, compliance with the law has been a reactive process. Under my watch, we’re taking a comprehensive, proactive approach to this issue for the first time in this state’s history. This is one more step in helping Oregonians regain confidence in their citizen initiative system.

Kate Brown is Oregon secretary of state.

Unveiling Our Signature Verification Room

Published on September 21, 2009 in Ballot Initiatives and Elections. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

These are pictures of Oregon’s Signature Verification Room. It is empty now with the exception of a few computers, some desks, and the flickering lights coming from a couple of Ethernet routers, but that doesn’t figure to be the case for much longer. With signature sheets for ballot initiatives due on September 25th and a constitutionally mandated 30 days1 for our elections staff to verify those signatures, the serene scene you see above will be a rare occurrence.

During this month, 5-6 elections officers at a time will work in shifts to get through more than 200,000 signatures expected to be submitted later this week, which have been gathered to refer to voters up to four bills passed by the legislature. Each staff person receives training from a forensic document examination consultant.

This will be the first time that the Secretary of State’s office will be conducting the full signature verification operations for initiatives and referenda; previously, each county was responsible for the operation. That changed in response to an issue raised by US District Court Judge Michael Mosman in his opinion on a 2008 challenge to the signature verification process.  Judge Mosman upheld the underlying process as valid, but raised concerns that verification standards could change from one county to another.

In order to insure a uniform standard, the Secretary of State has brought the entire verification process under the auspice of the Elections Division, relieving our county partners of a large amount of work and guaranteeing the signatures be evaluated uniformly.

As you can see from the first picture above, we’re taking security on this operation very seriously. Only Secretary of State staff will be able to access an outer door, which then leads to the locked cage you see above. Observers from proponents and opponents of the referenda will be allowed in the room under supervision.  As this process gets under way, we will be providing you with a behind the scenes look at the verification process as it is taking place.

[1] Oregon Constitution Article IV, Section 1, Subsection 4a