Senate District 10 extends into Polk County and includes west and south Salem.
A tight race for the Oregon Senate seat representing south and west Salem will likely hinge on how many voters correct signature issues on ballots – and a winner may not be apparent until mid-November.
The contest between Sen. Denyc Boles, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Deb Patterson narrowed again following more ballot counting Thursday, with Patterson in the lead by just 387 votes.
Senate District 10 includes about one-third of Marion County voters, plus a large portion of Polk County. In Marion County, Clerk Bill Burgess said about 960 ballots from District 10 voters were returned but not accepted, nearly all for signature problems which voters have until Nov. 17 to correct.
About 680 more District 10 ballots have been scanned in and remain to be counted, Burgess said. That will likely happen today.
Polk County had about 400 ballots challenged as of Wednesday morning, most because of signature problems, chief election clerk Cole Steckley said.
The office hasn’t yet provided an updated estimate for Friday or said how many of those ballots belong to voters in the district, but the pending Marion County ballots alone are enough to tip the race.
Some 76,114 ballots have been counted in the race for the seat held for almost 20 years by the late Sen. Jackie Winters, with Boles now at 36,451 votes to Patterson’s 36,838. Libertarian candidate Taylor Rickey had 2,684 votes, about 3.5% of the total.
Democrats had hoped to flip the seat blue in 2020 following Boles’ appointment in June 2019.
Patterson led in the race after initial returns election night, which had her at 50% of the vote to Boles’ 45.9%, with about 50,000 ballots counted.
But a statewide trend of Republicans returning ballots later, on average, than Democrats, has given Boles a 2:1 edge in ballot counts since, Burgess said.
Boles has nearly closed the gap of about 2,000 votes that separated her from Patterson on election night.
In interviews Friday morning, both candidates said they want to see all votes counted and have observers watching as election workers process remaining ballots, but neither raised concerns about the process.
“I feel good,” Boles said, noting the trend of late-arriving ballots favoring her. Her campaign has posted on Facebook urging voters to watch for notice that their ballot has been challenged because of a signature issue.
Patterson said the process requires patience.
“I’ve been around enough to see elections are often unpredictable,” she said.
Voters whose ballots are challenged because of a missing or mismatched signature receive a note in the mail from their county elections office and have until Nov. 17 to correct the issue by returning a signed declaration in the mail.
It’s a simple fix, but most voters never respond. About 2,500 people who voted in the 2018 governor’s race in Marion and Polk counties had ballots rejected because of signature issues that they never fixed.
Burgess said the work his office is doing now is no different from every election, but it’s rare that the outcome of a local race might hinge on fixing challenged signatures. Marion County voters can sign up for alerts that will email or text them if their ballot is challenged.
Voters with questions or concerns should call their local clerk’s office. Marion County can be reached at (503) 588-5041 and Polk County at (503) 623-9217.
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Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
