Ahead of Oregon’s May 19 primaries, some voters may have questions about election security. Years of rumors amplified via social media have stoked fears about non-citizens voting in large numbers, people casting mail ballots that were sent to their spouses or to dead voters, and voters casting multiple ballots. These are serious issues that, if happening on a large scale, would make any citizen question the results of an election.

In candid conversations, elections officials from the three Portland-area counties were happy — downright eager — to provide some answers.

“Most of us in the world are not elections administrators,” says Dan Forester, Washington County Elections Division manager. “So why would you know?”

Is there fraud in Oregon elections?

Oregon’s Legislative Fiscal Office found that from 2000-2019, there were around 61 million votes cast by mail in Oregon elections. In that time, only 38 criminal convictions of voter fraud were obtained. This amounts to a 0.00006% rate, orders of magnitude away from amounts that could swing elections.

In the 2018 and 2020 elections, over four million votes were cast. According to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office, 192 instances of voter fraud were reported by residents and local elections officials in Oregon. Of these, only three were referred to the Oregon Department of Justice.

Does this line up with these Oregon county election officials’ experience?

“Be an informed consumer of information,” says Tim Scott, Multnomah County Elections director, suggests. “Even if you connect with a social media post on an emotional level, it may not be true. There just is no evidence non-citizens are registering to vote and voting in large numbers. There is no evidence there is large-scale fraud happening.”

But what is the scale? How many instances has Scott seen? “Very few and far between … maybe 3 or 4 cases in 18 years, and we process 150,000 to 200,000 voter registration transactions every year,” he says.

He credits the potential penalties for voter fraud: a $125,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

Forester, at Washington County, agrees.

“I’ve been doing this for about 12 years, and I have seen very few cases of what I would call intentional ballot fraud,” says Forester. “We do sometimes have cases where, out of ignorance, somebody might sign someone else’s ballot … but those are very easy to detect.”

What processes ensure the security of our elections?

Throughout the year, the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office coordinates with counties to cross-check voter registration data to adjust voter rolls for voters who have moved, might have inadvertently created duplicate records, or passed away.

What else is involved to protect our ballots?

“One of the key components is that every ballot that is returned to us goes through a signature verification process, matching up the signature on the ballot return envelope to the signature that we have on file,” Forester says.

“Generally, folks are surprised that we signature verify 100% of ballots,” says Catherine McMullen, Clackamas County Clerk and an elections administrator since 2015, “because they think maybe it’s a statistical sampling, which it’s not.”

County election workers are trained by the state to analyze each ballot’s signature for different characteristics that give away forgeries, Scott says, including their shape, maturity, direction of slant, line starts and ends, and spacing.

“The signature verification process actually has a couple of steps,” Forester says. “There’s an initial step that the human verifiers are doing, and then ‘challenge ballots’ are also reviewed by another group of even more experienced signature verifiers.”

If the signature is questionable, a request is sent to the voter to “cure” the ballot, which they have to do in 21 days or their vote won’t be counted in that election. McMullen says around 1% of ballots cast in Clackamas County are challenged initially and most are cured by voters afterward.

Can I see this process for myself?

Some voters might feel that just hearing about these systems isn’t enough to ease their election anxiety. All three county officials had suggestions for folks who still aren’t sure.

McMullen says the best thing to do is visit your local county elections office for a tour.

Forester agrees: “We’re going to extend that offer even if we feel like somebody’s going to be hard to convince,” he says. “There’s nothing like coming in and doing a tour of an elections office, watching for half an hour how we verify signatures ballots, the whole process, talking to elections administrators … there’s no better way to understand the process and to dispel that fog of misinformation that’s out there.”

“It’s a secure process with lots of checks and balances to uphold democracy,” Scott adds.

“I don’t think people realize all those checks and balances until they see it for themselves,” McMullen says. “Our ballot tabulation room is a secure room, all on its own. None of those computers are connected to the internet. That’s where the votes are actually counted.”

Forester says it’s also important to think of who the people are who actually handle our ballots.

“They are paid temporary workers, but these are people from your community. It’s the same thing in any county,” says Forester. “These are our friends and neighbors who are really passionate about the democratic process. They want to do what they can to help make sure that elections are secure and we’re holding up that principle of one person, one vote. These are just regular folks, like you and I.”

And why not you or I?

“Come see what it’s really like, see the people that are doing the work,” he says. “And if you want to come join us, sign up to be an elections worker and see what it’s like on the inside.”

However, these officials do caution, although the experience of touring or working at the election centers may be anxiety-reducing and educational, it won’t necessarily be exciting.

“Well,” Forester says, “as any elections administrator would say: We like it to be boring.”