CANYON CITY — Simulated results from the upcoming May 21 election were visible on the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office website for several days, potentially creating confusion for voters, but elections officials say the numbers were part of a routine testing process and did not represent actual early election results. 

Grant County Clerk Laurie Cates said some members of the public had been able to access an election results testing site from the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office, prior to it being taken offline on May 14 after she brought it to the office’s attention.

A spokesperson for the state agency said the testing site is part of a routine process with its election night reporting vendor to make sure the system is running as it should and to make sure that county clerks and members of the media are familiar with the process for accessing election results before Election Day.

A publicly accessible URL where the testing site lives was shared with clerks and media in late April, said Laura Kerns, spokesperson for the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office, which oversees elections and election results. Kerns said the results data shown on the testing website were not real result numbers from early ballot returns.

“We don’t link to it anywhere on our website, but if you know the URL you can access it, and it is clearly marked that it is for testing purposes only and the data is simulated, not actual, election results,” Kerns said. “The plan was always for the testing site to be available until May 14. The site that will eventually display real election results data will go live May 17.”

Early unofficial results will begin showing on the site, https://results.oregonvotes.gov/, at 8 p.m. on Election Day, May 21, immediately after the polls close, Kerns said.

Cates said members of the public who had access to the site earlier this week would have seen actual Grant County candidate names with “test” result numbers.

“(What I saw were) fake numbers,” she said. “If you looked at all the numbers, there were 5 votes and 10 votes. Just these numbers. They were all fake numbers, and you could tell it wasn’t real. (The website) said ‘Testing in Progress’ at the top.”

Cates said the actual results won’t be entered into the system until 8 p.m. on election night.

“I don’t want people to get wound up about something that was simply a testing site,” Cates said. “It’s not supposed to be searchable. It’s supposed to be a test site to make sure it’s working correctly. Nothing goes in there until the elections happen.”

Political science professor Jim Moore at Pacific University in Forest Grove, a longtime observer of Oregon elections, said he has seen fake results on the testing site in the past and “it clearly says this is a test.” He added that actual early results have never been posted prior to 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Moore said using simulated results to test the election reporting website site is a routine process and “not a big deal.”