... and that we get in contact with people that have problems with their ballots. In most other elections, their vote numbers haven't been a significant number of votes to affect the outcomes of certain races, etc. like they might have in this measure 92 vote.
I think that there are rules on the books and many good honest efforts to make sure that this process works. But I think this election has to have us ask the following questions that hopefully will make it work better, and expose if this election was tainted at all or was just a long hard fought ballot that we honestly lost, even if by a slim margin.
1) What are the standards that are used to judge whether signatures don't match. Who judges them? I've been since told that handwriting experts are used to analyze them.
2) What kind of observance by third parties monitor this process?
3) Are these processes evenly applied in all counties across the state, or just in certain counties versus others? What happened in Clackamas County with vote counting has me wanting to know how all counties do this counting, not just large counties that we have more representation in those administering the process like Washington and Multnomah.
4) When looking at signature matches, for the honest voters that have problems having their signatures match, is 8 days to respond long enough? You have to ask yourself who are the honest voters that are most likely affected by this wrongly. It is likely the elderly or other voters who have chronic health conditions that don't allow for them to sign their signatures in a consistent fashion that might have larger problems responding to a 8 day notice to validate or fix their ballots than other voters. And in a vote like Measure 92, I would guess that these voters, as voters that are likely more concerned about health issues than other Oregon voters do percentage-wise, that they would be more have apt to have voted for measure 92. So, even if those who are counting votes have no other visibility of the person's ballot other than their signature, those with an agenda might feel more inclined to invalidate signatures that are "close" to being valid in this election than in other elections where such ballots might not make a difference and be more inclined to vote a certain way.
What would be nice is if we could have had a count of yes or no on these 4600 ballots on Measure 92, even if they aren't counted, just to see if it would have passed if some or all of them were counted or not.
I think that what would be a good goal of this election would be to have a bit more public visibility on all of these questions, so that we can feel comfortable with the process, and that it is being done properly and fairly across the board in every county. Even if we lose, if we can feel that it is being done right (hopefully already having been done right), we'll know that the next time we get such a ballot measure being voted on, we'll not have a rigged system to deal with.
Maybe we can change some of the rules for things like this where if there's a recount on a certain state-wide race or ballot measure, that if the amount of votes being thrown out (for whatever reason) exceeds the margin of a given recount, we provide an additional measure of time period for those to correct their ballots too, so that we can ensure that we have as many valid voters having their votes counted in a given pivotal race.
Again, if we provide a healthy analysis and period of perhaps doing some reforms after this election, even if we lose this vote, we'll gain the respect of all Oregon voters for having done the right thing, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, third parties, or independents. That is what we should shoot for. It will also be symbolic to the rest of the states watching us how they should also reform their even more backward processes to ensure they have fair voting systems in place too.
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