A Muñoz victory would give House Democrats the three-fifths supermajority needed to pass revenue-raising bills without GOP support.

By Julia Shumway, Oregon Capital Chronicle

With a potential Democratic supermajority on the line, a Republican state representative losing by fewer than three dozen votes said Friday evening that she has hired a lawyer in her fight to stay in office. 

Rep. Tracy Cramer, R-Gervais, trailed Democrat Lesly Muñoz by 34 votes in Oregon’s 22nd House District, one of the most competitive in the state, after Marion County updated its vote counts Friday evening. 

The county, home to the state’s capital, is still processing and tallying thousands of votes countywide after dealing with a higher-than-anticipated number of write-in votes that take longer to count. Hundreds of those ballots are in the 22nd District, based in Woodburn and surrounding agricultural communities. The district straddles Interstate 5 from the northern portion of Salem on the south to Woodburn on the north.

Early results showed Cramer with a narrow lead. Oregon’s largest newspaper called the race for her, the anti-abortion group that supported Cramer’s candidacy hailed her victory and Republicans in the House touted their ability to keep Democrats from winning the 36th seat needed to create new taxes or increase existing ones without GOP support.

But when Marion County released updated numbers Wednesday evening, Muñoz had pulled within 138 votes of Cramer. By Thursday, she was leading by one vote. And after Marion County tallied more votes Friday, Muñoz was up by 34. 

The race is of critical importance statewide: A Muñoz victory would give House Democrats the three-fifths supermajority needed to pass revenue-raising bills without GOP support. Senate Democrats crossed that threshold by decisively flipping a Bend-based Senate seat now represented by former Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp, a longtime legislator who led his caucus in a quorum-denying 2023 walkout that cost Knopp and nine colleagues the ability to run for reelection. 

Supermajorities in both chambers would give Democrats, who also control the governor’s office, more power as they attempt to pass a transportation funding package in the 2025 session. 

Cramer, who did not return a call from the Capital Chronicle on Friday, alluded to the potential supermajority in an emailed statement Friday evening. She added that she was ahead by 500 votes in initial results Nov. 5. 

“Our campaign has retained legal counsel to ensure the integrity of this election, all laws are followed, and every legal ballot is counted,” Cramer said. “We know Oregon’s election system registered illegal voters, and we will fight to ensure that it does not affect the outcome of this race.”

The state’s Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division discovered ahead of the election that it had incorrectly sent information to the Secretary of State’s Office to register as voters more than 1,500 people who did not provide proof of citizenship during DMV interactions since 2021. Just 10 of those individuals voted, election officials found, and at least five of those 10 were citizens when they voted. 

The hundreds of people who should not have been registered live throughout the state. County clerks removed 1,259 of them from voter rolls before mailing ballots, and they flagged the remaining 302 to make sure that if they received and returned ballots that those ballots would not be counted unless the voter demonstrated eligibility.

Muñoz didn’t return a call, but her campaign manager said in an email that she appreciated election officials’ work and would continue to monitor results. 

Marion County Clerk Bill Burgess told the Capital Chronicle Friday morning his office has 809 ballots for that race that have had ballot envelope signatures verified. Another 733 weren’t accepted — most of those ballots are subject to signature curing, which means that a voter either forgot to sign their ballot envelope or their signature didn’t match the signature election officials had on file.

Those voters have until Nov. 26 to fix the issue. All voters should check to make sure their ballot was counted through oregonvotes.gov/myvote or by using BallotTrax in large counties, including Marion, that pay for the service. Voters should also keep an eye on their mailboxes, as county election officials will mail notices to voters who need to correct their signatures. 

The county may end up receiving more ballots, in part because some voters return their ballots to a different county than the one they live in. It’s a common mistake in Salem, where the Willamette River divides Polk and Marion counties but not the city of Salem, and Clackamas County delivered a couple hundred ballots to Marion County on Thursday. 

“This makes it a pretty dynamic situation where it’s hard to say just exactly how many we’re going to have to count,” Burgess said. 

County workers tallied 234 ballots in the 22nd House District on Friday, according to updated results posted Friday evening. That still leaves at least 575 ballots to count, along with any challenged ballots that voters cure. 

Marion County also had a high number of write-in votes this cycle, with many local races unopposed or missing candidates. Write-ins take longer to tally than other votes, as human workers need to examine each ballot to read the name, make sure that a voter who wrote in a candidate marked the box for a write-in candidate and uncheck that box if a voter marked it without writing a candidate’s name, verify that the candidate written in isn’t already listed on the ballot and make sure that the write-in candidate has a name. Write-in votes for Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus count as write-in votes; write-in votes for “none of the above” do not. 

Marion County plans to release additional results every day that it processes ballots, but the results of close races like the 22nd District may not be known until after the election is certified in December. If the race remains close, Oregon law calls for an automatic recount if the difference between the top two candidates is within 0.2% of the total votes cast. Based on the current number of votes counted in the 22nd District, that would be about 40 votes. 

While voters and political prognosticators may need to be patient, Burgess stressed that they’ll be able to trust the results. Every ballot envelope has a unique number, and each voter is allowed only one active ballot. 

“Have patience, because we’re going to get it all done, and we’re going to work deliberatively to make sure that each voter’s vote is counted just the way they want it to be counted,” he said. 

Julia Shumway has reported on government and politics in Iowa and Nebraska, spent time at the Bend Bulletin and most recently was a legislative reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times in Phoenix, Arizona.