The fate of seven-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader hung in the balance Wednesday as elections officials in Oregon's third-largest county scrambled to tally tens of thousands of ballots with blurry barcodes that were being rejected by vote-counting machines.
Clackamas County, a sprawling county of nearly 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers), includes a large swath of Schrader's redrawn 5th District, where he is facing a stiff challenge in a key U.S. House primary from progressive candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner. Schrader was trailing in the vote count Wednesday, but the race remained too close to call largely because of outstanding results from the county south of Portland.
