Election worker indicted in ballot-tampering case
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A grand jury has indicted a former Clackamas County election worker accused of tampering with ballots before the November election.
Deanna Swenson, 55, of Oregon City, has been charged with altering a cast ballot, unlawfully voting more than once and official misconduct, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum announced Thursday.
Swenson had yet to be taken into custody. She did not return a message left on her answering machine and it is unknown if she has hired a lawyer.
Investigators found no evidence that others were involved.
Swenson, a temporary employee who had worked for the county in prior elections, is accused of filling in ovals on ballots where preferences had been left empty by voters.
The alleged misconduct occurred Oct. 31, less than a week before the general election, when another election worker claimed to see the registered Republican marking a partially complete ballot. It is common for voters to make choices in high-profile races and then skip the local contests in which the names of the candidates are unfamiliar.
Oregon was the first state to conduct elections exclusively by mail, and the November election marked the fourth presidential contest in which the system was used. Never before had an election worker been accused of marking choices.
"The integrity of the Oregon elections is of paramount importance," Rosenblum said. "The Department of Justice has made this investigation a high priority since the allegation came to light."
The indictment did not specify the extent of the alleged tampering. Andrea Cantu-Schomus, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Kate Brown, said election officials identified six suspect ballots. Rosenblum's office, however, declined to say how many ballots were altered, citing the pending trial.
The alleged tampering apparently did not affect any races. All the suspect ballots were reviewed to identify voter intent - or, in this case, lack of intent - and then counted.
Brown plans to certify the election results Dec. 7.
"Security procedures are in place to detect this kind of conduct," said Brown, who responded to the allegation by assigning two people to monitor ballot processing in Clackamas County. "The system worked and no person's ballot was impacted. Oregonians can be confident in their election results."
Altering cast ballots and voting more than once are felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. Official misconduct is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in a jail.
Deanna Swenson, 55, of Oregon City, has been charged with altering a cast ballot, unlawfully voting more than once and official misconduct, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum announced Thursday.
Swenson had yet to be taken into custody. She did not return a message left on her answering machine and it is unknown if she has hired a lawyer.
Investigators found no evidence that others were involved.
Swenson, a temporary employee who had worked for the county in prior elections, is accused of filling in ovals on ballots where preferences had been left empty by voters.
The alleged misconduct occurred Oct. 31, less than a week before the general election, when another election worker claimed to see the registered Republican marking a partially complete ballot. It is common for voters to make choices in high-profile races and then skip the local contests in which the names of the candidates are unfamiliar.
Oregon was the first state to conduct elections exclusively by mail, and the November election marked the fourth presidential contest in which the system was used. Never before had an election worker been accused of marking choices.
"The integrity of the Oregon elections is of paramount importance," Rosenblum said. "The Department of Justice has made this investigation a high priority since the allegation came to light."
The indictment did not specify the extent of the alleged tampering. Andrea Cantu-Schomus, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Kate Brown, said election officials identified six suspect ballots. Rosenblum's office, however, declined to say how many ballots were altered, citing the pending trial.
The alleged tampering apparently did not affect any races. All the suspect ballots were reviewed to identify voter intent - or, in this case, lack of intent - and then counted.
Brown plans to certify the election results Dec. 7.
"Security procedures are in place to detect this kind of conduct," said Brown, who responded to the allegation by assigning two people to monitor ballot processing in Clackamas County. "The system worked and no person's ballot was impacted. Oregonians can be confident in their election results."
Altering cast ballots and voting more than once are felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. Official misconduct is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in a jail.
fits that she's republican their the only ones who cheat, Never a democrat Never, like when 106,981 people vote in a county and there are only 98,000 registered. Good catch there, I'm sure it will be life.
 @rapture You are pushing a lie that has been completely debunked: http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2012/nov/19/we-people-petition/online-petition-claims-obama-got-more-votes-one-co/
 @rapture Then there was Ohio in 2004 where Diebold was the company running the voting machines and the Republican Secretary of State told the Bush campaign that he would guarantee Bush would get Ohio. The programmer for the machines was previously found guilty in Washington of hacking bank accounts, setting up dummy accounts that looked like the real thing and pocketing thousands. Electronic voting machines without a paper trail should be banned.
Guess we won't be hearing about this one on Fox News
Geez lady, come on. Is that helping whats left of this country?
Miss the old days when we voted on machines in the neighborhood school gym.
Mail-in balloting is rife with chances for fraud, as are electronic voting machines. I am still of the opinion that voting is one place where the highest technology is not required nor desired.
Â
Register to vote in the precinct in person, provide photo ID to match name to registered name, to match name to face, sign the registration sheet to match signature. Voter manually indicates preferences on paper ballot and deposits ballot in locked receptacle. Ballot boxes are sequentially numbered, distributed in rotation to the polling places and signed for both in and out.  Boxes to go directly central office in an escorted manner, are opened under supervision and oversight and the ballots are loaded into the "dumb" counting machines. All stages have multiple wittnesses.
Â
As opposed to:
-Program software to change indicated vote in a percentage of cases. Wittnessed cases of this have occurred in the latest Presidential election.
-"Finding" uncounted ballots until the neccessary number of appropriate votes have been tallied.
-Distributing "extra ballots" to be mailed in certain districts and to certain people.
-"Designated voters" "helping" by marking ballot for Registered voter.
Â
 @Woodswalker
 Uh huh, and what about people who are/were unable to get to their respective local polling place on election day? I'm a trucker, and on election night I was sitting at a truck stop in Eaton, OH. I live in Bothell. If it wasn't for mail-in voting, I wouldn't have been able to vote at all. Are you saying that, simply because my job kept me away from home on election night, I should have been disenfranchised of my Constitutionally guaranteed rights? What about elderly and/or disabled voters who can't get around by themselves? Are you going to volunteer to drive around delivering them to their respective polling places, or are you going to deny them their rights as well? What about military servicepersons stationed overseas? Kinda hard to cast a ballot in Kirkland if you're sitting in an Army barracks in Korea.
 @Mikeftm  @Woodswalker Even before Washington had "mail in" balloting you could still vote absentee by filing a form with your local election office and mailing the ballot in. On the idea of a US Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. No such thing. I'm not sure about the state constitution.
 @Mikeftm  @Woodswalker 15th Amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It doesn't specifically state that all citizens shall have the right to vote. Only that those who have the right to vote may not exclude anyone on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Early on in this country you had to be a property holder to have voting privileges. The Washington State Constitution Article 6 Section 1 is very different from the US Constitution "All persons of the age of eighteen years or over who are citizens of the United States and who have lived in the state, county, and precinct thirty days immediately preceding the election at which they offer to vote, except those disqualified by Article VI, section 3 of this Constitution, shall be entitled to vote at all elections." Note it says "entitled" Not exactly a "right" but probably would be interpreted as such by the courts. Thanks for the reference.
 @jcman  @Woodswalker
 15th Amendment, my friend. Although it most specifically deals with the issue of race, it does include the phrase "the right of citizens to vote."
@Woodswalker Washington state is one of only two in the country that gives drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Once they get the license, they can register to vote online with only the license as I.D. Because we all vote by mail, there is no way to really identify the voter as even a citizen of the country.
Those who vote decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything. - Joseph StalinÂ