Wasco County approves Secretary of State agreement to receive Enhanced Voting ballot remake station

Wasco County commissioners unanimously approved an intergovernmental agreement on Feb. 4 to acquire an Enhanced Voting Ballot Remake Station provided through the Oregon Secretary of State’s statewide contract.

County Clerk Chrissy Zaugg told the board the station—funded initially by a federal grant—will allow county staff to electronically mark and scan damaged or unreadable ballots, aid Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) voters and streamline remediation of spoiled ballots. Zaugg described the system’s workflow: election data is exported from county software to a flash drive, uploaded manually to the offline device, and duplicated ballots are subject to bipartisan, physical audit.

“The system is not connected to the internet in any manner; it is self-contained. All you do is plug this into an outlet for power,” Zaugg said, describing the vendor’s security posture and the intended manual audit of duplicated ballots.

The contract packet included Amendment No. 34 to the Secretary of State’s statewide contract with Enhanced Voting LLC; attachments detail insurance, security and SOC 2 / NIST-oriented hosting and testing requirements, county deployment counts and a pricing schedule. Wasco County’s delivery allocation in Exhibit P is one full kit for the county.

Vice Chair Philip L. Brady moved to approve the IGA; Commissioner Jeffrey L. Justesen seconded the motion, which passed unanimously. Zaugg told commissioners the initial three-year software license and equipment costs are covered by grant funds; the county will be responsible for future software renewals and optional hardware or accessory upgrades after the grant period.