What's the word on Oregon?

[Guinastasia]

I keep seeing the colored “map” that Oregon still hasn’t decided-what’s up with that, and has anything been said about it?

[Whack-a-Mole]

It hasn’t been decided yet because, I believe, Oregon did a mail-in election. They’re waiting for all of the ballots to arrive and then count them which is presumably harder than states that can feed punch cards through a machine.

In the end, however, since Oregon makes precisely zero difference at this point in the election the media is ignoring it.

[ElvisL1ves]

One might think a mail-in election would get counted FASTER - just open the envelopes and stuff the ballots through the scanner. Why is this method taking so much LONGER than before? Sheesh, Florida is MUCH bigger and they’re going to have their votes counted TWICE before Oregon gets done. Think Oregon’ll reconsider their procedures after this?

I have to admire drudgereport.com quoting exit polls from Oregon on Election Day, even though there were no polling places for voters to exit from. Anything to get your hit count up, huh, Matt?

[toadspittle]

*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
One might think a mail-in election would get counted FASTER - just open the envelopes and stuff the ballots through the scanner. Why is this method taking so much LONGER than before?

I assume it’s the same situation as the overseas absentee ballots: the ballots just have to be postmarked by election day. They’re waiting for the mail to arrive now.

[toadspittle]

Oh. Here it is. Nevermind.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-ELN-Vote-at-Home.html

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:50 a.m. ET

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – A throng of voters returned ballots to drop-off points at the last minute – a major reason the state was one of just three in the nation where the presidential winner was still unclear a day after the election.

Strangely, they don’t give the results of the pres. election, even though 80% of the votes have been counted.

[starfish]

CNN shows Bush 585,975 [48 %] , Gore 559,840 [46%] with 86% of the precincts reporting.

[Montfort]

Salon is reporting that:

[quote]
With 96 percent of the vote counted in Oregon, Gore had 662,155 votes, or 47 percent, to Bush’s 658,123 votes, also 47 percent. Green Party contender Ralph Nader, viewed as a spoiler to Gore’s chances of winning Oregon, drew 63,284 votes, or 5 percent.

Also, New Mexico is conducting a recount:

New Mexico was waiting for a recount of 67,000 absentee and early-voting ballots from the state’s most populous county before it could declare a winner. Officials in Bernalillo County, which includes Albuquerque, began that recount Thursday morning.

With 99 percent of the precincts reporting before the recount began, Gore had 255,597 votes, or 49 percent, and Bush had 245,526, or 47 percent. Nader won 19,215 votes, or 4 percent.

[dtilque]

In Oregon, all ballots had to be in by 8:00 p.m. election day. The postmark is meaningless.

For those who are interested (not very many, I’m sure), http://kgw1.solidweb.com/nov2000elec/race6000.htm is a site with the Oregon count that is still being updated about once an hour. As of this writing, Gore was leading by just over 2000 votes.

CNN seems to have stopped updating their Oregon page and, no doubt, their NM page. For them, if it’s not Florida, it doesn’t count. Does anyone know a site with the New Mexico vote count that is still being periodically updated?