Oregon county clerks brace for challenges of running the general election

Editor’s note: Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Stay informed with OPB on the presidential race, key congressional battles and other local contests and ballot measures in Oregon and Southwest Washington at opb.org/elections.

The November general election is just eight weeks away. In Oregon, the job of overseeing elections in local, state and federal races falls to Oregon’s 36 county clerks.

But that job has gotten harder in recent years with the spread of disinformation, staffing shortages and budget cuts, along with physical threats and the intimidation of election workers in Oregon and around the nation. In addition, 15 of Oregon’s county clerks — or more than a third — are administering a presidential election for the first time in Oregon. Most of them, however, can draw on prior experience working on elections in the clerk’s office, including presidential ones, according to Rochelle Long, Klamath County Clerk and the incoming president of the Oregon Association of County Clerks.

In addition to Long, Lane County Clerk Dena Dawson and Harney County Clerk Derrin “Dag Robinson,” who is also the incoming vice president of the OACC, spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller about the challenges they’re facing and the efforts underway to prepare for the general election.

Related: What you need to know about voting in Oregon and Southwest Washington

The following highlights from their conversation have been edited for length and clarity.

The difficulty of combating disinformation and misinformation in rural Oregon

Derrin “Dag” Robinson: “We try to post on social media, especially out here in rural Oregon. It’s one of the best ways we have to get information out. When we put something out that’s official information from my office regarding elections, what comes underneath of it or behind it becomes a target for more mis- and disinformation. So that becomes a huge problem for us to try to manage … And so then we try to find another avenue to get the information out … So a lot of word of mouth and unfortunately, social media is really the only avenue that we have beside our local paper.”

Some county clerks’ offices are in ‘survival mode’

Dena Dawson: “I started in July of 2022 and there are nine of us full-time staff for elections and .. seven of us are new to our roles or to elections. And in that time, in addition to having three unscheduled recall elections and multiple district formations, the public records requests were incredibly burdensome for a long period of time. … We’ve been in a bit of survival mode because a lot of us are new to our roles and we’ve had retirements of folks that were here for 30 years before I got here and a lot of the information and processes were in their head. And so we’re rebuilding basically every procedure that we touch and we’re looking at it through the lens of ‘Is this efficient? Is it compliant with law? How are we going to get these things done?’”

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The emotional toll of being in ‘survival mode’ during elections

Rochelle Long: “We’re in survival mode and so we joke around a lot about, you know, “What fresh hell will today bring?’ … But you just kind of do that I think to get through it all … There are some days that I think we just do cry because we’re out of time, we’re out of people, we’re out of money. We’re trying to get this all done and make sure it looks smooth to the voters and it should look smooth to the voters. That’s what our job is. But there are days where it’s like I just want to go into a room and scream and then maybe I’ll feel better. So there is really that emotional side of it too that a lot of people don’t know.”

Related: Listen to 'OPB Politics Now'

What it’s like to try to engage with residents who challenge the integrity of Oregon’s vote-by-mail system

Dawson: “They’re literally called ‘election integrity groups,’ and they recruit for concerned citizens who are interested in making sure that the election system and the elections are conducted with integrity. … So I meet frequently with our local voter integrity group and … I’ve even reached out to them and said that if they’re hearing anything or they read something that’s concerning, to pass it on to me so that I can make sure that I’m informed. … So I find that it’s really helpful for me to, in addition to the alerts that we’re getting from the Secretary of State’s office, to just keep my finger on the pulse of what’s happening. And the group is not always happy with the information that I’m providing. They may not be hearing what they want to hear, but they are hearing about what our actual process is and what the law allows us to do in Oregon.”

Robinson: “I have worked really hard to get those folks into my office to show them how this system works, how the processes work and it matters. .. We all work in one sandbox together, the 36 of us, and we have to do the same thing the same way, all depending upon volume. But the processes are exactly the same. And so having them come in, go through the processes and try to keep it to show the transparency and yet the security at the same time, a lot of them get a lot of comfort from that when you actually see these processes in work and see what we go through to ensure each vote is counted properly, accurately, transparently and securely. They leave feeling really, really good. … What some of them do say is, ‘Well, I trust you but I don’t trust them … I think they’re still messing with them,’ … I’ve had folks come in and say, ‘This is a great system,’ but then I can read (on a Facebook post) that they’re insistent that the election was stolen. So all you can do is just shake your head and say, ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t stolen on my watch.’”

And while there is no such thing as ‘a perfect election,’ neither is there widespread election fraud

Robinson: “There is not a perfect election – ever. You have humans involved in it, and we have to do it as accurately as we possibly can and we do it as transparently as we possibly can. And so I never say that there’s a perfect election because there truly is no such thing. But there certainly is no widespread fraud that has ever been found.”

Dag Robinson, Dena Dawson and Rochelle Long spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation: