Multnomah County will reprint 550,000 ballots, delay mailing ballots to voters due to printing error – By Jamie Goldberg (The Oregonian/OregonLive) / April 24, 2023
Multnomah County elections officials will reprint more than 550,000 ballots and delay mailing ballots to voters after they mistakenly placed a Board of Commissioners race on the May 16 ballot for all county voters.
Only voters who live in District 3, which straddles Interstate 205 mostly in Southeast Portland, are supposed to decide during the May 16 election who will take over the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners seat vacated by Jessica Vega Pederson, who voters elected as Multnomah County Chair in November. However, due to what the county is calling a “ballot proofreading” error, the race appeared on all ballots countywide.
The county is now reprinting those ballots at a cost of more than $300,000, according to county spokesperson Jessica Morkert-Shibley. The county will reprint all ballots, even those for District 3 voters, to “avoid confusion for voters and problems with tallying ballots when they were returned,” Morkert-Shibley said.
Ballots were supposed to be mailed to voters Wednesday, but the county is telling voters to expect delays in receiving their ballots due to the error. The county said in a press release that ballots will be mailed “no later than the statutory deadline of May 2.”
