The elections may have ended, but some ballots still need to be counted. Some people have received notices in the mail that their ballots have been “challenged.”
“I will send a letter to that voter saying ‘we’ve challenged your signature,’ and they have three weeks or 21 days after the election to cure that,” Crook County Clerk Cheryl Seely said.
Most of the challenged ballots in the recent election were due to signature characteristics.
In the State of Oregon, you are automatically registered to vote if you have a driver’s license. If the signature on your ballot looks different than the one on your license, it could be subject to challenge. Your vote wont be counted unless you cure it by the three week deadline.
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Seely says resolving the issue is simple.
“If it was a signature challenge, they receive a voter registration card in the mail,” Seely said. “All they have to do is fill it out and sign it and return it back to us.”
Failing to cure a challenged ballot changes your voter status.
“If they choose not to return this back to us and not to correct, then their voter record is flipped into an ‘inactive status,'” Seely said. “In order to receive a ballot in the next election, they have to update again.”
Crook County says it had 167 challenged ballots, which is about 1% of the total ballots that were returned.
Deschutes County says it had 2,400 ballots that were challenged over signatures and another 200 in which the ballot was not signed. That’s about 2.5% of ballots that were returned.
Jefferson County says it had 138 signature-challenged ballots (17 have been resolved) and 35 that were not signed (8 resolve) out of 10,047 ballots returned.
If you have found a ballot challenge in your mail, you have until November 29 to cure it.
