Please tell your listeners that it is critical for them to e-mail testimony asserting that ORS 354.483,  a statute that mandates that ALL unused ballots shall be destroyed IMMEDIATELY after 8.00 p.m. on election day, be retained in its current form.

The Secretary of State  is attempting for the 2nd time, to either repeal or amend that mandate in this bill, HB 4174.
 
What’s more in recent years, she has been having her subordinates tell County clerks NOT to comply with that mandate. That was uncovered after the 2010 election.

After I requested (in writing) the Washington County Commissioners to tell county election staff to comply with the mandate in ORS 254.483, I was sent a letter from the Washington County elections director explaining why they wouldn’t at the advice of  the SOS.

Victoria’s note: 

“Advice” doesn’t have the force of law. Why are our elections officials holding onto ballots after 8pm? In a time when rightly or wrongly–mostly wrongly–our elections executives can open our ballots and separate them from our identifying envelope seven days before they are counted, what excuse is there for not destroying them immediately after they’re counted at 8:01pm on election day?

Ballots simply laying about is a prescription for trouble and abuse.  We’ve had occasions in the past of having thousands more votes than voters which Bendl uncovered in the early 2000’s in three Oregon counties (other counties would not give her access to their counts). 

Allowing ballots to lie around serves to undermine electoral integrity. At a time in the United States where there are at any given time 1.8 million dead people on the voter rolls; at a time when leftist groups are willing to commit acts of voter registration fraud and who knows how much actual voter fraud;  at a time where elections officials shun identification to vote because it’s “racist;” we need as much integrity as we can get in the voter process. 


When the leftist Oregon Secretary of State says she’s in favor of letting the ballots lie around a little longer –for some reason– it undermines what little integrity is in the system that’s left.