Clackamas County Chairwoman Charlotte Lehan's campaign ...

OREGON CITY -- The campaign of Clackamas County Chairwoman Charlotte Lehan is considering launching legal action before the Nov. 6 election in the wake of a state investigation into possible ballot tampering at the county's Elections Office.

The Oregon Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation of a temporary elections worker who possibly tampered with cast ballots.

The tampering "was a Republican effort," and Lehan's campaign is considering asking the Secretary of State's Office to step in and run the election, said Chris Edmonds, Lehan's campaign manager.

"This is clear voter fraud," Edmonds said. "Clackamas County might not be the best body to handle the election process."

Lehan is a Democrat. She faces former Wilsonville Mayor John Ludlow, a Republican, for the nonpartisan chair seat.

"With our polling saying the race is in a statistical dead tie, we?re very concerned about these allegations, so we will be taking very decisive actions to try to protect Charlotte," Edmonds said. "It's incredibly disconcerting to us, and we'll take whatever steps are necessary to make sure it's a fair election, because this throws it all into doubt."

Oregon Republican Party officials Friday afternoon refuted Edmonds' suggestion that it was a "Republican effort" and called on Lehan for an apology and retraction.

"This is a politically motivated allegation made with no evidence or basis in fact," said Allen Alley, chairman of the Oregon Republican Party. "The Oregon Republican Party and the Clackamas County Republican Central Committee have absolutely no involvement in this alleged violation and call on the Lehan campaign to retract this unfair and untrue allegation against the Republican Party."

Lehan's campaign is especially concerned with what's called the undervote. Voters will often fill in their ballots for presidential and other high-profile federal and state races but will often leave local races blank because they might be unfamiliar with the local candidates or measures.?

"From our perspective, Charlotte is the most vulnerable person in a case of downballot filling-in because the undervote is so high in these county commission races, typically 30 percent," Edmonds said. "It leaves open a huge margin of room for somebody, such as an election workers, to sway an election."

The Oregon Secretary of State's Office previously sent an elections observer to the Clackamas County Elections Office during the May 2010 primary. County commissioners had requested the state take over the entire process citing "numerous errors" by County Clerk Sherry Hall's office.

-- Yuxing Zheng
@ClackCoReporter

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-city/index.ssf/2012/11/clackamas_county_chairwoman_ch_1.html

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