[Intro Music] Voting by mail.

High Mister McFeely.

Some good delivery to you.

If you live in one of these states, you might have done so yourself.

In Vermont, Hawaii, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Washington, and Oregon, it's currently the primary way to vote.

Oregon political leaders say it's the wave of the future, and in Oregon, the future is now.

Oregon gets the special distinction of being the first truly vote by mail state, with the practice being made the standard for all elections through citizen initiative in 1998.

Mail in voting has been generally popular in Oregon since then, though we're now in yet another election year where the time, place, and manner of our elections is prominent in national conversation.

So what happens when you vote by mail?

After you send your election envelope through the postal service or drop it in an official election drop box, where does it go?

Who counts the votes?

How on earth did they keep track of everything?

To learn more, we're meeting with Jackson County Clerk Chris Walker, who during the May 2026 primary Election, election opened up the process for us to have a look.

Now on the verge of the November 2026 midterm general election, we're excited to share our election office field trip with you.

I'm Keegan Van Hook, and this is Us As We Are.

Us As We Are is made possible in part by The Roundhouse Foundation, a private family foundation that supports creative solutions to the unique challenges associated with rural culture and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, and by the Members of Southern Oregon PBS.

Thank you.

This is the main office over here, of course, when you need to register to vote.

You need... You can get a ballot, and you find out, oh, gosh.

You know what?

I moved.

I didn't update my address.

You can do address updates, you can change your party affiliation.

Anything that would happen administratively, it's our main office right here.

Election workers are the people we hire to come on and work for us during election.

We are truly working in a bipartisan fashion to make sure we get the job done for the public, for the voters.

We hire people through a local temporary agency, and we have for years.

They created an election worker list for us years ago.

We bring back a lot of the same people every election, but we're always looking for more people to add to that list.

Outsourcing that has really worked for us here at Jackson County.

This is kind of our... The hallway we follow.

We have an in and out process.

And the first step in this whole process, when we get fresh ballots in, it comes into this room to be basically sorted into... So they're all facing the same direction.

This is where that whole process starts.

We literally put them in just these mailboxes, fill up that box, make sure it's got the audit sheet with it, and then they're carried into our processing area.

These people are doing signature verification based on the ballots that have gone through the ballot sorter.

This is a very large piece of machinery.

Had it about 13 years.

It's an aging sorter, but these probably on the end cost around a $500,000.

Oh, wow.

So you're not gonna replace this every couple years.

You're going to get as much life out as as you can.

We've also had to replace the operating system.

We've had to replace all the computers.

We've had to replace the cameras, of course, belts.

Eventually, we will have to replace this, but a $500,000 is not a a small ticket item.

That's why we advocate at the federal level to the congress for election funding.

It's not that we want interference or that we want the federal government to conduct elections.

We, in no way, shape, or form, should have that.

The United States constitution gives the state sole authority over time, place, and manner for elections.

But what we do need from them is we need assistance with funding of purchases like this equipment, like we saw in the year 2000 during that whole presidential election fiasco.

A lot of election jurisdictions around the country had aging equipment, but what we didn't have was funding for infrastructure.

Well, we are kind of at that breaking point again where we had this huge infusion of cash due to the Help America Vote Act back in 2002.

We're at the point now where the congress really needs to provide funding so that we can replace aging equipment such as this.

Let's face it.

The local level, we conduct all elections, including federal elections.

Could you give this machine a name, Cruella, or then just Ella?

It's kinda funny you asked that.

So she simply got her name because she kind of gave us fits for a while.

And then at that same election, we had our technician come in, and he took and worked on it, got the mechanical working right.

And so thus, we had to cross off the crew, and she became Ella after that.

So her name is Ella.

You guys wanna see a pass of ballots go through?

100%, please.

Yeah.

So these just came out of one of the drop boxes.... Box right out in front of this building.

Yep.

And we just put our ballots in right now.

So maybe... Well, it depends on when they picked them up.

Okay.

So, like, we keep batch... This is all of today's that have been dropped out in front in our box, but we also keep track throughout the election, our audit sheets of everything that we received from the external drop boxes, USPS, and here in our office.

This will be our 144th batch that we've done.

Let me just grab my ballot and stick it on this order.

I'm gonna select the date.

Batch 144.

Now I can pick the drop source.

Is it mail?

Is it drop site or other?

So this is drop site.

We keep statistics on how many ballots come through mail, how many come through drop sites.

And we're gonna simply print the tags.

On the tag, it'll let me know it was batch 144, and it'll also give me the BIN number or the grouping number.

So in Jackson County, we have 50 precincts.

On the backside of the sorter, there are eight bins.

On the front side, there are eight bins.

It groups them on the backside bins into groups 9, 10, 11, 12, and so on to group 16 Mhmm.

Equal to all of our precincts.

And we call that first sort, the heavy precinct sort, meaning I have multiple precincts within one bin.

And I know that all my group nines are equal to precincts one to six.

All my group tens are equal 7 to 12 and so on.

So here's bin nine.

I'm gonna put my bin nine tag so that if we ever have to find an individual ballot.

And I can easily look through whatever that particular grouping of ballots is without having to go through 5,000 ballots to find a ballot.

I am simply going to step off her and start, and we're gonna feed these through.

We have to finesse them a little bit, so we don't get jammed.

It's reading the barcode, the individual ballot ID number built within this.

And the voter information, which is unique to that particular voter.

We upload data to the centralized voter registration so voters can get their My Vote data to see if we've gotten their ballot.

We have built in safeguards into the system, and the sorter definitely assists in that.

So if you have a signature doesn't match, it's gonna come out over in that bin.

If you have a no signature ballot envelope, it's gonna come out in this bin.

If we've reissued a ballot and we've done that, you send in both ballots, that's gonna go up here.

So we know that that one is out of scheme compared to what we have right now.

Most of the items that go to reject, and I can't show you names because they are the confidential voters We have a lot of judges, local law enforcement, deputy attorney general, city attorney, people that deal with criminal cases.

Yeah.

A lot of them want to have their address protected, their physical address protected.

So their data does not flow through the sorter system.

We instead, our full time staff, will go through those manually and approve those through the system.

So their data does not flow to the MyVote system either.

So if you're a confidential voter, if you go into MyVote to see where your ballot's at, you're not gonna be able to get that data, and that's purposeful.

When we do get a full batch of ballots, we simply move them to these shelves over here, for safekeeping in their order.

Once we close out of this, then we come over here to our next step in the process, which is this, the signature verification.

What was just done on this sorter, like batch 144, will show up on here.

They simply click into that.

They do review new, and they go through all the signatures in that batch.

Every single signature of every voter that submits a ballot gets signature verified throughout the process.

The top image is the image from their voter registration record.

And the bottom image, four ballots in a row, is from the ballot that was just scanned in over in this order.

Here's one that didn't have a signature.

So we have a code that we simply put.

They didn't sign the ballot.

So we go through this until all of our ballots are are through the process through election night.

Then moving on, once they're done, they go back through the sorter.

Okay?

For a second sort.

The sorter slits the bottom of the envelope.

But what's problematic about that?

A ballot falls to the bottom, and it could slice the ballots.

So we physically, a very manual process in this day and age, we simply pound them upside down to drop basically the ballots to the top.

And then we have to put them in another box to know where we're at.

These are the days of miracle and wonder.

You have put little sweat equity into it when you're... We call it the pounding process.

So... Yeah.

The ballots get put back to the sorter in those group orders because now we're sorting into individual precinct order.

And then in the end, I'll show you the product that we are gonna have once they go through the sorter.

These are ballots that have been fully signature verified, and they have been slit.

See right here, the ballots are now prepared for our two person bipartisan teams to start removing the materials in preparation going through the tally system.

Here you go.

So she's simply going to take her batch tracking worksheet.

They're gonna write the ED number, which the ED number is not only here on this ballot box.

That same number will be on their zip tie with their tag.

Then we also have a target card.

There's some familiarity here.

We've got ED291, ED291, and ED291.

We make sure all of those things match before they start processing their ballots.

They're gonna count all the envelopes first while the materials are still involved, and then they're gonna flip flop.

They're each gonna count each other's worksheet.

One's gonna start counting 25.

The next is gonna count it.

And then they're gonna go through that until they have all of those envelopes counted.

And then they're gonna keep track of that on their batch counting worksheet in envelope count.

Their next step is they're gonna remove the materials from those ballots.

Once they've removed all the ballots, they're simply gonna place them on top of the envelopes, and they're going to do their counts on ballots to tabulation minus any rejects or minus any empties.

On occasion, we have a voter who gets voting credit based on the signature verification, so it shows they voted.

There's no ballot in the envelope.

They simply haven't... Or they put in a letter.

Sometimes nice, sometimes not so nice to us.

I see.

Then we're gonna have to have an empty in there.

So we've got voting credit in the centralized voter registration.

But we don't have a ballot.

Those are exceptions.

We have to track every exception that comes through this process.

So I'm gonna give their sheet back because that is gonna follow this particular batch of ballots through the process.

So thank you, ladies.

You're welcome.

Thanks, guys.

Appreciate you.

So let's move this direction.

Once we have a batch of ballots that is now prepared, envelopes are completely zip tied.

That entire batch of ballots plus the envelopes are gonna go back here to the tally room along with the batch tracking worksheet, the header card, the zip tie, and of course that box that has that same ED number on it.

So this is our tally room.

We do have an observer here.

We also have one of our county auditors here that they always come and assist us, provide us with great assistance to sit with our observers.

As you can see, we get very distracted during election with everything that's happening.

So... Yeah.

Now our observers can be a member of the public who requests us to come and observe the processes and procedures during an election, or they can be from a candidate committee or a measure committee, but it's all allowed by statute.

If observers can see the process, they can see the diligence, they can see everything that we do, they're gonna pass on that information to other people and hopefully dispel a lot of the bad information and rumors that are out there just being fueled by social media.

All of our areas are under 24 hour a day motion activated cameras that are being recorded, held in our DVRs that maintain throughout the challenge date of any election.

So, anyway, tally room, please don't touch anything.

We wanna maintain the integrity of this.

When our ballots go through the election boards, they take their materials and place them simply here And why do we do that?

Because we wanna make sure when we stage ballots, these are the ballots that have not been tallied yet.

And then we have a section at the end.

Those ballots have all been scanned.

Okay?

You don't want to confuse ballots that haven't been scanned with ballots that have been scanned.

So she is grabbing her stack.

She's simply gonna separate her envelopes.

She's gonna open up her batch of ballots, take out her, batch tracking worksheet and her target card.

First thing, she's gonna, put her target card through and scan that.

So now it's basically telling the software, I'm creating a new batch.

This particular batch is this number now.

And she's simply going to grab her ballots, put them into the high speed scanner.

It's simply going to scan those through.

So she's finishing up this batch now.

As you can see, it's... It scans very fast.

Then once those are through going through the system, she'll simply go in and close out that batch.

It's gonna keep a running total of all of the batches.

You can see those ED numbers up there.

And then it'll, show up the batch she just did with how many cards were in it.

Now she's gonna go back through and make sure the card count.

She's going to check it against her batch tracking worksheet.

She's going to check to make sure her ballots to tabulation were 85, and that's exactly what went through the scanner.

Now if these numbers are ever different, we have to go back through and most of the time have the board that processed those recount those ballots.

Because 99% of the time, it was human error in counting as they were being prepared to come back to tally.

These match.

We're gonna put that sheet.

These ballots will move on, and they go right over here to the counted ballot section.

And as you can see, there is batch 280 that was just put through that system.

Okay.

And it's simply this process until we're finished with the the election.

After we tally and after the election, we have to maintain materials.

This is where we store our ballots once we get through this election.

As you can see, we have an election saved right there.

And then what we'll do is simply find a space to put all that.

We'll mark everything, and we will actually have a sheet on it, puts dates of when we can actually destroy those materials after we have gone through the federal retention cycle of two years.

So they tally them up and that's what goes off to the display you see for the results?

Well, in Oregon, we have central tally.

This is our central tally system.

It is networked to itself, but it has no connection to the county network.

It has no connection to the Internet whatsoever.

What we have to do is we take encrypted thumb drives, USB devices.

And we actually have to... Off the administration station, which is this one, we simply take that and download that data for that particular release, like coming up for 08:00 election night.

We'll have our first release of results from everything we've already pre scanned.

And then we'll take that encrypted thumb drive, take that material over to a networked computer.

And then we will simply load that into election night reporting system.

Two people will visually verify based on a paper printout of results to what is loaded into the election night reporting.

We'll verify all those numbers match.

We cannot release any results till 08:00 election night.

Then we publish those results.

That's where the voters can go to the secretary of state site and look at our local results.

And then the state system will actually accumulate those results at the state level as well.

Well, what if it gets hacked between the county and the state, or the state has somebody hacked their system?

The great part about this is this stands alone in our county.

Our results will be certified from what goes to our tally system.

So even if, let's say, the state has an issue, we still have our results here in our system.

We are safe guarding these materials.

They are held in our election offices even though we are sending a copy to the secretary of state.

But the original election results, which will be certified in every county, are certified at this level.

And that ensures the integrity of our election results.

Wow.

What a process.

I mean, yeah, the ultimate organization system is just kind of what I keep thinking in my head.

And there are so many checks and balances in the system the amount of audit sheets that we do through each and every step of the process, even when we're getting ready to send out ballots.

When I say we are small but mighty, I don't think people quite realize just how small staff we have, but we are resilient, and we get the job done every time.

This system of organization, categorization, and enumeration to count our votes is extremely interesting to learn about and, of course, has been the subject of intense controversy in The United States now for several cycles.

Since filming this field trip in May, enough has transpired that it made a follow-up with Chris Walker feel appropriate.

We sat down with her again in late September.

So Oregon has had mail in voting since 1998.

Can you kinda give me a little bit of the history of just how Oregon adopted mail in voting and how it's operated in all of those years?

1998 is the year I was born.

So, like, this is literally my whole life it's been mail in voting here in the state.

Well, even though 1998 is when the Oregon voters voted to make vote by mail the sole way to vote in Oregon, In Oregon, we've been conducting vote by mail elections since the '80s.

In fact, the first ever vote by mail election was in Linn County in 1981 for a just really local election.

Del Riley, who was the county clerk in Linn County and his chief deputy, Steve Duncan Miller, both conducted that first election here in Oregon after going to California and actually participating in a small election in San Diego County.

They went and observed and assisted down there and loved it so much that they brought it back to Oregon.

And so the progression was from 1981 till 1998 that Oregon voters decided to make vote by mail the sole way to vote in all elections, including federal elections.

We're the only state in the country who our voters voted to make this the way to vote.

Other jurisdictions maybe had legislative changes, or they have hybrid models where they send everyone a ballot, like in California, for example, but then also have polling places and vote centers available.

So they really run two separate elections.

Hugely expensive to run a hybrid model, but we find in Oregon that this has worked for us, and it's worked well for us.

Now that being said, is it perfect?

No.

There is no such thing anywhere around the world of a perfectly run election.

But based on a lot of the rules that we have in place, a lot of the safeguards put in place, it has worked for Oregon very well.

What do people like or value about a mail in system like this?

I think convenience is huge for one.

It really assists persons with disabilities.

UACAVA voters, meaning our military and overseas voters.

I really feel passionate about that, especially for our military voters.

One thing that gets asserted is that mail in voting is insecure.

It's open to cheating.

How do you respond to that kind of an assertion about the mail in voting system?

Our mail in voting system is what we have.

And is it a perfect system?

Absolutely not.

There are always things we can do better to shore up those processes and procedures and to make sure that we're providing not only a safe and secure election for the public, but that we can give the public confidence in the system that we have.

Of course, people have seen a lot in the news about possible changes that might be coming to the election.

There were executive orders and commands issued to the postal service and postal service potentially changing policy.

There were a number of months there where it felt... People just felt extremely uncertain about how this election was gonna unfold.

Yeah.

What's the ultimate result of all of that talk and all of those headlines?

What's what's changing about this election?

So the ultimate result is there are zero changes in the state of Oregon.

It caused us a lot of angst too.

How are we going to pivot on a dime to try to handle some of these things if and when that happened?

We had to remind ourselves there are 36 other Oregon County Clerks.

We're not in this alone.

And one thing about election officials, County Clerks in general and our offices, we're very resilient.

We always figure it out.

I've had more outreach from different civic groups, from individuals, people asking questions, and I'm grateful for that because you should be reaching out to your local trusted election official, not just responding to a post on social media that is more than likely disrupt and to cause angst out there.

What do you think the number one question about this election you've gotten is, and what's your answer to that question?

That one comes out pretty easy.

It's am I gonna get my ballot?

And the answer is yes.

We have ongoing throughout the year have meetings with the postal service.

The word is and the promise to us is there are no changes.

We're going to continue as we always have with the vote by mail processes.

I'm hoping that gives the public a little bit of confidence in our system.

We encourage voters to use the method that they're comfortable with.

You want to mail that in, we encourage voters to do so.

It is prepostage paid.

But do it early.

Do not mail your ballot in after the seventh day prior to the election, which I believe is the October 27.

We encourage you to vote, get it done early, then you can start tracking that on the oregonvotes.gov/myvote.

And the secretary of state is actually going to roll out a ballot tracks tool here in the next couple weeks that voters can actually take and sign up for that because it's opt in to that system.

It's a little more robust.

It might give you a little bit more information.

But be watching that from the secretary of state's office.

And the other push that we see out there is encouraging people to use the official ballot drop boxes.

So we're publishing this on the 29th.

So it sounds like if you still have your ballot at home while you're watching this, you should probably take it in person to a drop box.

Now you can always bring it right here to the elections office as well that you can either walk up to or you can drop it right from convenience of your car, as well as all of those library locations.

Do you anticipate in the long term things with mail in voting changing?

Do you see any of that coming on the horizon?

Or or what do you think is gonna kinda shake out when it comes to that conversation?

I think legislatively, you never know what's gonna happen even at the state level.

But the federal level is where we see the most noise and conversation about this.

And whether it's perception or whether there's actually facts concerning that, I think there will be continued conversations federally and statewide.

As an elections administrator, we're here to follow the law no matter what that may be, and so we will continue to do the good works that we always do at the local level.

Last big thing I'm curious about is just how the the tension that can kind of come up around elections, especially in the atmosphere we're in right now, How that affects you guys here?

You've described it a little bit as angst, know, this this office in your position, you're certainly dealing with with angst.

I wonder if you can say more about that.

You know, I've observed in you this very strong commitment to a nonpartisan stance.

I think in both our conversations so far, you've been incredibly precise in what you say in terms of keeping it nonpartisan.

Of course, the conversation happening nationally tends to get dragged into partisan stuff very quickly.

Tell me a little bit about how you go about riding that line.

Elections are bigger than us as individuals.

We, at the county level, represent the voice and will for all our in the elections process.

That being said, we are committed to the job that we do for our voters, for our citizens.

We just have to maintain that focus.

We have to know that we are people that follow the law.

And if that law changes, then we have to pivot and change with it.

Our individual positions or our individual likes or dislikes have nothing to do with the job that we're doing at hand.

And as a voter myself, I have opinions and personal likes and dislikes on an array of issues out there.

But I choose to vote and express my opinion on my ballot itself.

You won't see me expressing my personal opinions out there because that's not my job.

My job is to follow the law, and I was put in this office and entrusted by our citizens to follow those laws.

I can actually relate to a large portion of what you said in terms of I'm exactly the same way.

I vote.

I have likes and dislikes.

You know, I'm a person with a personal politics like I think we all are.

We have to recognize that.

Everybody is.

But the biggest piece of this is, I just see a lack of respect for our similarities and especially of our differences.

And we need to get back to a place where we can express our opinions.

We can agree to disagree on an array of different issues.

But mutual respect is hugely important.

I just see we have moved so far beyond that in the current atmosphere around the country.

I'm hoping we can get back to that.

But keep in mind, it's not the first time this has happened.

As a country, we're gonna have our ups and downs.

But again, that mutual respect is just hugely important for the things we agree on as well as the things we don't agree on.

I am grateful to live where I do, especially here in Jackson County, Oregon.

What a beautiful area.

I'm honored to serve the citizens, the residents of Jackson County.

My family history is here, and I'm very, very grateful for that.

Us As We Are is made possible in part by the Roundhouse Foundation, a private family foundation that supports creative solutions to the unique challenges associated with rural culture and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, and by the Members of Southern Oregon PBS.

Thank you.