Defective barcodes found on ClackCo ballots ahead of primary election

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Election day is just two weeks away and Clackamas County elections office is dealing with a big problem. They say their machines aren't able to count a large number of ballots. 

“Yesterday was the day we started opening ballots to prepare for tally,” Clackamas County clerk Sherry Clark explained.

Clark said that's when elections office employees realized countless ballots have defective barcodes, which tells the counting machine how to read the ballot.

“It's actually the way the ballots are printed. The barcode's lines were not crisp and dark black and then the ballot itself, there's light ink and dark ink,” Clark explained.

Clark said they don't know exactly how many barcodes are unreadable but told KOIN 6 News the number is high -- likely two-thirds of the 309,000 ballots sent to Clackamas County voters.

Now, the elections office must prepare to tally all those votes by hand.

“Elections must go on. Elections need to be done on time. Dates are set in stone and we do not get overwhelmed with this because we're problem solvers,” Clark said.

KOIN 6 News found out when it comes to hand-counting ballots there's a lot of work involved to ensure election integrity.

“Each ballot has a unique identifying number and when we take that ballot to duplicate onto a new ballot, that number will be transferred to the new ballot. It will be handwritten so that we can always marry the bad ballot to the good ballot that will we duplicate, so that there's always tracking of exact number of ballots that we received,” Clark explained.

Clark invites voters with concerns to observe the process.

“We can show anyone that wants to look at the duplicated ballot along with the original ballot to make sure that it's done exactly the same,” Clark said.