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Democrat Wu wins last undecided House race

PORTLAND, Oregon (AllPolitics, November 5) -- Republican Molly Bordonaro conceded defeat Thursday to Democrat David Wu in the last undecided race for Congress. The race was left in doubt Tuesday night because most voters in Oregon's 1st congressional district cast absentee ballots which election officials did not count immediately.

Bordonaro, a 30-year-old public policy consultant, called Wu, a 43-year-old Portland lawyer, Thursday to personally concede and then she held a news conference to do it publicly.

Wu held a 5,500-vote lead after the 75,000 ballots cast at the polls were counted Tuesday night, but he had to wait until enough of the 150,000 mail-in absentee ballots were tallied before he could be sure of victory.

Furse
Rep. Elizabeth Furse  

The 1st district seat was left open when Rep. Elizabeth Furse, a Democrat, chose not to run again.

Nationwide, Democrats won 211 House seats to the Republicans' 223, with one seat held by a Democratic-leaning independent. The Democrats picked up five seats that had been held by Republicans.

This is likely to be the last Oregon election in which any ballots are cast at polling places, since voters in that state appear to have approved a measure providing for mail-in only balloting for all races in the future.

A spokeswoman in the elections division of the Oregon secretary of state's office said under the present system no absentee votes can be counted until after they are individually checked to make sure the citizen did not also cast a ballot at a polling place.

Each county was expected to complete the checking process by Friday.

Gathering the absentee ballots was another challenge, since Oregon voters have another option of dropping them off on election day at any polling place in the state.

In some cases, ballots had to be sent across the state to their home counties.

The "permanent absentee status" chosen by many Oregon voters was designed to give them more time to spend at home deciding how to vote on complicated ballot measures.


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Thursday, November 5, 1998



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