Greater Idaho vote sits at edge of Wallowa County recount ahead of ballot deadline

The vote on a Wallowa County Greater Idaho ballot measure remains close enough that it’s now flirting with a mandatory recount.

Approval of the ballot measure has remained tight since Election Day, with the yes vote holding an eight-vote lead as of Monday. If passed, the measure would require county leaders to discuss the idea of transferring governance of some Oregon counties to Idaho.

Wallowa County Clerk Sandy Lathrop wrote in a Thursday email that there were six challenged ballots remaining before the county could complete its count. Challenged ballots are ballots that were received or sent out before the election deadline but have not been counted because the voter forgot to sign their ballot or the voter’s signature doesn’t match the one election officials have on file, among other reasons. The elections office gives affected voters a chance to identify themselves. A ballot from a voter who successfully identified themselves after a challenge is called a cured ballot.

Lathrop said she’s following the process.

“All voters have been sent letters; if a phone number was available they were called as well,” she wrote. “Some of the voters have stated that they will come in prior to the June 6th Challenge ballot deadline.”

Even if the six challenged ballots are eventually counted, it wouldn’t be enough to change the results of the election. However, the cured ballots could potentially push the margin of victory below seven votes, which would trigger an automatic recount. Lathrop wrote that the actual vote count wouldn’t be known until after the June 6 deadline passed.

Citizens for Greater Idaho, the group responsible for the ballot measure, didn’t wait for a final vote count to declare victory. Greater Idaho issued a Thursday press release saying the group clinched a win because the margin of victory was larger than the number of challenged ballots. This came after Greater Idaho declared victory a first time on May 17, the day after Election Day.

Greater Idaho has been placing measures on rural Oregon county ballots since 2020. While the language on each ballot measure has varied, most of the measures require the local board of commissioners to hold regular meetings to discuss the prospect of extending Idaho’s borders to the Cascade Mountains. Greater Idaho hopes to use these ballot measures to build public support for the idea and pressure the legislatures in Oregon and Idaho — the bodies with the actual power to change state lines — to begin discussions with one another.

Greater Idaho-backed ballot measures have won most of their elections, but Wallowa County voters rejected the idea the first time they weighed in on it in 2020. This second election has been more contentious, as local resistance to Greater Idaho was accompanied by a campaign funded by Western States Strategies, a political arm of the Portland nonprofit Western States Center.

Greater Idaho quickly filed a complaint against Western States with the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office for failing to register as an opposition group while also taking issue with Western States not initially disclosing its role in the campaign. Greater Idaho filed a second complaint over “failure to report expenditures or in-kind spending” over some ads that were run late in the campaign.

In a press release, Greater Idaho bragged about the more favorable election result in Wallowa County even as the group drew formal opposition.

“The election results in Wallowa County this year were 1% more favorable than in the same County in 2020 despite the movement being outspent by social justice warriors this time,” the press release states.

Eastern Oregon is no stranger to close votes, even if they are rare. Last year, a Grant County vote for a bond to build a new public pool in John Day ended in a tie. A recount didn’t change the results, and without at least a one-vote margin of victory, the bond failed.