Could someone explain why those 4000 votes on the GMO initiative weren't counted?

[cascadiance]

8. From my discussions, I think that every effort has been made to make this an honest & decent process

I'm thinking that we shouldn't be overly worried about people trying to game the system. Even the Clackamas problem from last election I think was dealt with appropriately, and hopefully was just the actions of a few that weren't an organized effort to do some tampering that would cause significant damage.

http://www.katu.com/politics/Changes-at-Clackamas-County-Elections-to-prevent-ballot-tampering-223220841.html

The Clackamas situation I think shows that even if many are honest in trying to put together a decent system not vulnerable to tampering, etc., that on occasion it does get manipulated, and we need to constantly review it to see if and when it does work right or not, and improve on systems if they are shown to allow for some bad outcomes that take away from us accurately measuring what our citizen voters want.

I think in a case like Measure 92, where the stakes were very high with record amounts of money being spent, even if there weren't any manipulation efforts going on, in a race this close, it doesn't hurt to review it carefully to make sure it was done properly, and whether in fact things like 8 day periods to fix problems with ballots worked as well as they could in terms of doing everything possible to provide our voters who played by the rules the ability to have their votes counted. If we could show that there are ways to improve it, this would be the optimal time to do this sort of review and make sure that it works and is improved as needed.

I think just as important is to make the process as visible as possible, so that the public also feels comfortable that the state is doing its job right to make it work right. Half the battle is the battle of perception. If enough of what is being done right isn't known by the public, then it doesn't do a lot of good to do it right if people don't trust what they don't know is going on if there are things like lawsuits happening as a result of election outcomes. These times especially when trust in our government is close to all time lows.

So far, from what I'm hearing, I'm impressed by the way things are done that most of us don't know about, and I think more of us should know the lengths many officials go to to make it a fair process.