Some vow to recall county clerk after alleged ballot tampering revealed
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OREGON CITY, Ore. – The alleged ballot tampering in Clackamas County's elections division comes after a high-profile mistake two years ago under the direction of Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall.
During the May 2010 primary election, Hall's office misprinted ballots that included two races that were slated for the November general election. The mistake cost taxpayers $120,000.
There were no allegations of wrongdoing in that case.
A recall effort of Hall is now underway after Friday's revelation that a temporary county election worker allegedly tampered with ballots. Clackamas County identified that worker as Deanna Swenson late Monday afternoon. Spokesman Tim Heider said Swenson was relieved of duty right after the alleged ballot tampering was discovered.
"The Clackamas County Elections Division and the Elections Division of the Secretary of State are cooperating to ensure that every ballot marked by the voter will be counted as intended and that any ballot alteration in violation of election law will not be considered," he said in a statement.
Heider said Swenson is not a county employee and worked part-time at the elections division.
But organizers of the recall effort seeking to remove Hall from office say it shows a history of ineptness. They say this is just one more example of Hall not keeping a close eye on things. They say her mistakes and inability to oversee her own workers are not only costing taxpayers a lot of money but they are casting serious doubt about the integrity of the elections she runs.
Voters outside the election office Monday morning said Hall should shoulder the blame.
"It's frightening. It's very, very frightening," said Robert Sears. "In an election like this where it is extraordinary close, to have anything out of the usual happen calls everything in question."
Rich Murphy, however, doesn’t blame Hall but the worker who allegedly tampered with the ballots.
"Whoever did the crime will do the time," he said.
Hall declined to speak with KATU News about the alleged ballot tampering or about her record as clerk. But in a letter to KATU News, she said she is cooperating with the Department of Justice investigation into the tampering.
Hall was re-elected to office in 2010. The office has a four-year term.
Organizers of the recall said if Hall doesn't step down, they will proceed with the filing and signature gathering.
"If she's really got the best interest of the county in mind, she's going to resign," said Dave Adams, a recall organizer.
Meanwhile, reporters with Willamette Week went to Swenson's home Wednesday afternoon. WW asked her how many ballots were involved and reported that she tearfully replied, "Only the two."
She told WW that she hadn't yet hired an attorney. She did not answer any other questions.
Investigators say Swenson used a pencil to fill in empty ovals, but the original voter used a pen. They say they're searching for this pattern in every ballot she handled.
Investigators confiscated all of those ballots but won't say how many or what they'll do with them.
At an emergency meeting Monday, county commissioners asked whether the voters who had tampered ballots will get to vote again. The answer to that is no, because the ballots are secret and who voted those ballots can’t be known.
But every ballot has a barcode and investigators can track those to the volunteers who inspected them but not back to the voters.
KATU News reporter Dan Cassuto contributed to this report.
Um, isn't tampering with ballots a Class C felony? This woman could be spending 5 years in jail for this.
This is sad and should never have happened, but I just honestly do not see that Ms Swenson's actions should be shouldered by Sherry Hall. Â Something like this is a thing that this woman almost certainly did on her own. Â To make her boss pay for what happened is simply not acceptable.
6 so far.......this year. How many times has she worked there?
How many  strikes do you have to get before your out, aren't we at 4 "mistakes" at the moment? if she were a private employee she would be fired? This is incompentant at best and malicious at worst, and in either case she should resign or be fired.
 @Benjamin Barber There isn't any question of whether Ms Swenson will be fired or not ... she is likely to face charges.  But I just don't see how her boss should be held accountable for her actions.
Dude looks like a lady..
 @MrAchilles What are you talking about?  She is a lady.
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 @MrAchilles And her appearance is relevant because...?
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 @MrAchilles Are you 12?
If I were still a Clackamas County resident, I would elect to recall her. It is very evident that they did not have adequate procedures in place to prevent the ballot tampering, and as a result there will be voters who cast ballots who will not have their ballots counted.
 @pdxd I would say differently.  They have the means to assess how many possible changes she made.  She only works part time, and if it works as it did when my own mother counted ballots, there should always have been a Democrat and a Republican, side by side.  That is evidently how she was caught. Â
@pdxd Have you ever voted the old fashioned way in a rural setting? Must not have. There may be an hour with noone but the VOLUNTEER POLL WORKER there. How do you recall a resident? Residency does not mean an elected position.
 @Taxedstwrker  @pdxd Interesting.  I have never been in a poll booth that was not manned by at least two people.  It is always supposed to have one Democrat and one Republican there.  Even in the tiny town of Terrebonne, that is how it worked when I lived there!
Those people jumping on the recall bandwagon are doing so unfairly. Supervising personnel is not an easy job. You need to trust the people working with you to do their jobs or else become a micro-manager watching each and every move they make. And, if you have dozens of employees to supervise, you cannot be a micro-manager and do your job. If a problem occurs, you deal with the problem according to procedures and laws. You do not cover it up or tell the individual to go and sin no more. Sherry Hall dealt with the problem in the legal and proper manner. She should not be faulted for doing her job as a supervisor!! Had Ms. Hall not taken the actions she did, then there might be cause for recall as she would not be doing her job in serving the people of this county.
 @Sailor1994 I agree.  Besides which, the woman who broke the law was stopped and she will face charges, as she should!  So the system worked right ... we only need to see how much possible damage the woman did.
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facebook.com/deanna.swenson.9In case anyone else feels like sending Deanna Swenson a msg. Keep it civil.
Did she really do something horrible ? Or is this just the typical Oregon hater stuff.. ? Let's face it, mistakes happen and sometimes they are costly.. I don't see what she did that would result in a recall, maybe I'm out of the loop, but if someone can enlighten me please by all means do so, if it's just hater stuff, then by all means skip it.. Thanks. !
 @dougrpdx If you are asking whether Sherry Hall did anything wrong, I agree.  Jumping up and down to fire her is not even her fault.  But there is absolutely no way to accidentally change someone's ballot.  You either choose to do it, or you don't.  Deanna Swenson needs to be charged with a crime.  She's already fired.
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If you are talking about âSherry Hall", it is just a witch hunt. If you are talking about" Deanna Swenson", she committed a federal offence and needs to do time. I believe that even though a super is in charge and responsible for their employees, they are not guilty of a crime for every indiscretion an employee commits. I mean, how can she be looking over each personâs shoulder constantly? At least the perp was found out, reported and "fired" as soon as it happened. If people are that bent (as they should be) about the fiasco in 2010, why not deal with it then? I agree, that was a total waste of money, negligence and stupid, but this current issue was/is handled the best it can be.
A recall? If you have a legit reason for a recall, go for it. This is not a legit reason. This is a reason to toss  Deanna Swenson in jail. If she gets away with this, it makes even more of a mockery of our election process and will just tell people they can get away with anything.
The voting system in the entire country sucks. It needs a complete overhaul. This just proves it. Waiting 8 hours in line to vote is not acceptable either.
 @campergeneral Dunno where you live, but the voting system in Oregon is AWESOME. Keep your hands OFF it!  The woman was caught, and I'm betting she got caught early on.  They may throw out every ballot she touched, but I'm betting she hadn't done much damage before they caught her.
I hope she gets jail time for this.
Some Clackamas County citizens may have concerns over Sherry Hall but this event is not justification for a recall. Any election worker, whether paid or volunteer, could choose to act illegally when handling ballots. It wouldn't matter who the County Clerk was. The fact that this volunteer worker got caught demonstrates that effective safeguards are in place to prevent undetected fraud.Â
 @I812 PRECISELY
This is just so much election year crap. The Dem's know that their "Portland Creep" proponents are going to be thrown out in this election, so they want to invalidate an election they know they are *going to lose.* The fact the person doing this was a Republican, makes it a cause for them. What they, and Kate Brown don't want to talk about is the 100,000 illegal aliens in this state that have Oregon Driver's licenses, and are registered to vote.
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Want clean elections? Purge the illegals from the voting rosters. Of course they won't, they don't want anything to impede the Dem's majority in this state, even if it's a fake majority, propped up by illegals voting D.
 @Derek2mk Bullwhacky.  What malarkey! Â
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Let me make it simple for you. Â
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FIRST: Â You can't GET a driver's license in Oregon, without showing proof of citizenship. Â For a while, being a WOMAN made it hard to get a driver's license, if you'd ever been married. Â Even if we'd had a license for years, if we had it stolen, to get a new one we had to show our birth certificates (CERTIFIED, mind you ... who knew that the birth certificate I'd used for 67 years wasn't "certified"?). Â Then I needed my first marriage certificate. Â My divorce decree. Â My second marriage certificate (again ... ALL certified documents). Â It has improved, but I still live in fear of ever losing my driver's license!
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SECOND: Â As an apartment manager, I gotta tell you that illegals are easily figured out. Â They get denied as tenants, every time. Â Either their "driver's license" doesn't match in name with their "social security card" (which is fake also), or the name on one or the other doesn't match (and may not even match what they write on the application. Â Or the social security number is for someone born on a different date. Â They don't walk in and get valid driver's licenses, with what they get denied on a simply application for an apartment!
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THIRD: Â Illegals do not VOTE, certainly not in Oregon. Â It's possible that they could in Washington, if they were willing to lie on the registration, because Washington is not as careful about showing citizenship to get a driver's license. Â But voting is a class C felony. Â Why would someone wanting to stay under the radar take such a stupid risk, since that would derail any possibility of ever becoming a US citizen? Â An illegal immigrant keeps his head down low. Â He doesn't do something so silly as registering to vote. Â It doesn't put any money in his pocket, and is a foolish risk.
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Even in Washington, there has never been a known case of an illegal immigrant voting. Â There have been illegal votes ... almost all of them by convicted felons.
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You really need to crawl out of your hole and wake up.
 @Derek2mk Voting ILLEGALLY is a class C felony. Â
 @Derek2mk Way to pull a completely irrelevant topic into this.
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And then, when someone correctly calls you out you put a mild threat in there......not intimidating, it's childish dude, don't care who you are.
@Derek2mk as an independent, I'm sure getting tired of this partisan blather. You guys are the kind of people who get so irrationally wound up that you do this sort of thing. It's freakin' crazy as a somebody who doesn't wear kneepads for one party or another to watch people like you get more outraged at "the democrats" than with the person who actually admitted to tampering with ballots. You don't seem to be too upset about that at all. Says a lot.
@Playanekes You don't know a thing about me, Sweetpea. If you did, you might be a bit more careful shooting you mouth off about someone you don't know.
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That says a lot in my book, Slick.
 @Derek2mk  @Playanekes OOOH Derek, You are a scary guy! At least in your own book. Keep it real, Slick. This is not AOL chat.
Keep in mind that any ballot Ms. Swenson tampered with is VOID, which means that the preferences the real voter marked will not be counted. Thus it is certainly conceivable that her tampering will alter the results in those races - even if the folks she "voted" for do not win.
 @Thomas Nelson Yes, except this was early on, and the woman was a part-time employee.  Plus, she was marking ballots if there had been no choice made by the voter (a quick jot to fill in a blank, as opposed to changing a vote that had been made, which would have taken more time and would have been quickly spotted by the person teamed with her).  So she wasn't tampering with votes that people HAD chosen.  She was marking it if they hadn't voted for anyone.
 @Thomas Nelson They determined she tampered with *2* ballots. The legal system will deal with her. I don't think 2 ballots will alter the results in those races appreciably.
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As for recalling the clerk? The tampering was noted and reported immediately. Other than attaching puppet strings to employees how can a supervisor prevent wrong doing? Other than covering elections standards with temps and watching for unusual behavior what else could have been done to prevent this?
 @Shawn Alley  @Thomas Nelson Yes, and she wasn't changing ballots that had been filled in.  She was marking in her choice, if the voter left it blank.  How many people really do we suspect took the time to vote, and didn't make a choice for president?
Oregon is considered in play at a national level. What would happen if the election was so close that the vote was off by only two votes?
 @RalphCramden It wouldn't matter though, would it, Ralph?  Because she wasn't changing a vote from one candidate to another.  She was marking a candidate, if NONE had been chosen.  And it sounds as though she got caught early on.  It's why we are supposed to have two people (one Democrat, and one Republican) working side by side at elections.  This is exactly how it's supposed to work, and I'm proud of the woman who stopped her!
 @RalphCramden Have you been smoking the funny weed again? In play how? Jeezuz!Â
 @RalphCramden Unless you meant it as a hypothetical, in which case you should say something like: "Imagine Oregon is in play..." In which case I also apologize. The president will be taking all 7 (whoopie) electors from Oregon without a single doubt.
 @RalphCramden You know, ORYGUN's vote has never really counted in squat when it comes to a presidential election - fact & not fiction.
 @bonedÂ
At 47 to 42 with 8% undecided at this stage of the game anything could happen. All my Democrat neighbors are going to vote for Romney. They think that 0bama is a bumbling fool and don't trust him any more.
 @SilverGuardian  @iamtrogloditeÂ
That's good. I have seen it before.
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The problem is that everyone knows about it but our elected officials are doing nothing to fix it. They just argue back and forth while the situation gets worse, a lot worse. Soon economics will control us and we will have no choice in the matter.
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For this reason I have no hope it the US surviving.
 @RalphCramden  @iamtroglodite Hey, Ralph ... take a look at this.  I found it pretty awesome, and think it will interest you (except it may be that you already know it .. ) http://www.businessinsider.com/politics-economics-facts-charts-2012-6#for-now-lets-focus-on-the-government-deficit-part-of-the-problem-30
 @Kachina  @PD1202  @RalphCramden  @boned Kachina, WHAT free abortions?  Abortions aren't free, even at an abortion clinic.
 @RalphCramden Oregon turned blue at 8:00:01.
 @iamtrogloditeÂ
You will survive just fine.
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The ones that won't are the entitlement society that depends on government to get by.
 @Kachina  @PD1202  @RalphCramden  @boned "the "war on women" issue the Obama administration has fabricated"
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Actually it's the media making a big deal out of it.
"Â Once government fails people will fall back on the basics like food, water, shelter and security. Nothing else will matter."
Hmm. Something tells me I will adjust easily. That is pretty much all I ever cared about most of the time. I am not claiming I don't like extra, sometimes. It just seeems to not be worth it. I don't even have cable anymore because what little we get out of television just isn't worth having to watch comercials that are aimed at people with a 60 IQ.
 @PD1202  @bonedÂ
And by the way, I'm an independent and have been for decades. I dislike both parties as both are corrupt to the core and could care less about us commoners.
 @PD1202  @bonedÂ
Not to worry. If 0bama gets reelected he will drive the US into bankruptcy and then there won't be any women's rights. Once government fails people will fall back on the basics like food, water, shelter and security. Nothing else will matter.
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It will be about who is the strongest or has the most firepower.
 @I_MissÂ
Oregon has 7 electoral votes. Not worth the effort when there are states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and other up for grabs. Candidates have to pick the states with the biggest bang for the buck.
 @RalphCramden You should be a comedian. Why aren't the bishop and the creep here campaigning then? 8% undecided is unadulterated BS. Look, I wish like you that I lived in a swing state, this would be way more fun. We do not. Watch the national tv coverage tonight and see how fast Oregon turns blue. I don't like it either, but the facts is the facts. Good luck.
@PD1202 @RalphCramden @boned What women's rights are you talking about? I'm a woman and I cannot believe how some of you have bought into the "war on women" issue the Obama administration has fabricated. Is that the ONLY issue you care about is whether or not you get free birth control or abortions? You really need to broaden your horizons, it's not all about you.
 @RalphCramden  @boned Sure.....I can't wait for tomorrow...when you Repubs will see that America won't stand for someone who doesn't care about woman's rights...the middle class...the less fortunate...someone of another race...and a flippity floppity...  See you all tomorrow!  Good nite!   OBAMA / BIDEN!!  ( I like how you use a zero for the Presidents last name...that's cute )
@RalphCramden @boned  I've heard gary is pulling from D's as well.