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SUNDAY October 7,2012
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bendbulletin.corn CENTRAL OREGON VS. THE STATE
Vat= ELECTION 2012
Absentee voting rises
as does fear offraud By Adam Liptak New Yorh Times News Service
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — On the morning of the pri mary here in August, the local elections board met to decide which absentee ballots to count. It was not an easy job. The board tossed out some ballots because they arrived without the signature required on the outside of the return en velope. It rejected one that said "see inside" where the signa ture should have been. And it debated what to do with ballots in which the signature on the envelope did not quite match the one in the county's files. "This 'r' is not like that 'r,'" Judge Augustus D. Aikens Jr. said, suggesting that a ballot should be rejected. Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor here, disagreed. "This 'k' is like that 'k,'" he replied, and he persuaded his colleagues to count the vote. Scenes like this will play out in many elections next month, because Florida and other states are following the lead of Oregon and other Western states, swiftly mov ing from voting at a polling place toward voting by mail. Nationwide, the use of absen tee ballots and other forms of voting by mail has more than tripled since 1980 and now ac counts for almost 20 percent of all votes. Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a booth. See Mail /A5
Dree OSure ra eS are worS ere • In 2008-11, they weretwo to ninetimes oregon's rate — andwere likely higher
Q 0/ of all homes inBend(abouts,400 homes) were • V /0 foreclosed on between 2008 and 2011, according to Bulletin analysis of state data. In La Pine, that figure is13.1 percent.
For a chart oflocal communitiesversusothers in Oregon,seeA7 By Elon Glucklich The Bulletin
Central Oregon communi ties had foreclosure rates two to nine times higher than the state as a whole between 2008 and 2011, data released last week by the Oregon De
partment of Justice show. Local real estate experts, state officials and housing ad vocates have long pointed to Central Oregon as one of the regions hardest hit by the eco nomic collapse. But the new data paint the clearest picture
to date of the scope of Central Oregon's housing bust. The nation's five biggest commercial lenders — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank
ecovere
orses nee
By Zack Hall • The Bulletin
horoughbreds can be striking in their size and beauty.
miles fromland
But not long ago the 35 thoroughbreds at a Bend nonprofit horse rescue,Equine Outreach, were
New Yorh Times News Service
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malnourishedand underweight — barely resembling the majestic breed most familiar on racetracks. The horses have bounced around several rescue organiza tions and temporary shelters in Central Oregon after Crook County sheriff's deputies seized
By Stacey Solie New Yorh Times News Service
Matthew Ryan Wttttamel New York Times News Service
Sophie McCoy and others who monitor Tatoosh Island, off the tip of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, say they are seeing disturbing declines across species.
An Independent
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them from a Powell Butte ranch in 2009 as part of an animal neglect case. But they' re seem ingly healthy now on a pasture at Equine Outreach's ranch near
the Bend Airport. The thoroughbreds, though, have taxedEquine Outreach and its $400,000-a-year budget. So now that the thoroughbreds have recovered, the rescue is trying to find each a new home. "We' re just trying to deal with what is getting thrown at us," says Joan Steelhammer, the founder and president of Equine Outreach. "Every time somebody throws us a lemon, we seem to somehow make lemonade." With the influx of thorough breds in July, the Bend rescue has about 140 horses. See Equine /A7
EpuineOutreach Where:63220 Silvis Road,Bend Contact:541-41 9-4842 or www.equineoutreach.corn if you go:Bend O'Vine Chocolate Cafe 8 Wine Bar, 916 N.W. Wall St., hosts an fundraiser 5-10 p.m. Oct. 20 to benefit Equine Outreach. Tickets are $25 and available at benddvine.corn or by calling 541-323-3277. Purchase tickets by Monday and receive three free raffle tickets for gifts donated by local businesses. Livejazzby Groove Merchants, hors d'oeuvres and three pours of wine are included.
Tiny island is a warming bellwether
Weuse recycled newsprint Th e B ulletin
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Trainer Ashley Hash emian pats the neck of former racehorse Summings Affair, aka Chex (be cause of the white check mark on her forehead), after a train ing session at Equine Outreach last week. The 12-year-old mare was rescued from a ranch in Powell Butte and is being retrained for regular riding. Pete Erickson The Bulletin
rebellion, 2,000 HANGA ROA, Easter Island — A rebellion in sim mering, and it's far from any geopolitical hotspot. Very far. Not long ago, as some elders of the Rapanui people wistful ly recall, a sense of profound isolation pervaded this wind swept speck of land in the Pacific. Horses were the domi nant mode of transportation, flights to the outside world were few and far between, and Easter Island's Polynesian language enjoyeddominance in most spheres of life. Now, so many cars roam the roads of this fragile island (it is smaller than Martha's Vineyard) that Rapanui grim ly joke how they may outnum ber the moai — those prized towering statues their ances tors carved from volcanic tuff, beguiling archaeologists. Spanish, the language of Chile, which annexed Easter Island in 1888, now prevails across much of the island. See Easter Island /A6
omes
. Pi
A slow-burning By Simon Romero
and Ally Bank — foreclosed on 1,399 Bend homes from 2008 to 2011, according to the figures released by the Justice Department. To come up with a foreclosure rate, The Bulle
tin tallied up the total number of foreclosures in each com munity and calculated the number as a percentage of to tal homes, based on data from the 2010 U.S. Census. Bend had 36,110 homes in 2010, so the data show that about 3.9 percent of Bend homes were foreclosed on during the period, according to The Bulletin's calculation. See Foreclosure /A7
7 e sct i ons
TATOOSH ISLAND, Wash. — From a stretch of rocky shoreline on this tiny island, one can, on any given morning, watch otters floating on their backs, elephant seals hauling out of the water and a bald ea gle flying past murres huddled along a cliff face. It appears as if the island's
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wildlife is thriving at this remote outpost, which is also a former Coast Guard station crowned by a decommissioned lighthouse. It was also once a whaling base for the Makah tribe, which main tains treaty rights to the land. But for more than four decades, with the blessing of Makah leaders, Tatoosh has been the object of intense biolog ical scrutiny, and scientists say
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they are seeing disturbing de clines across species — changes that could prove a bellwether for oceanic change globally. "We all agree, it just looks different," says Cathy Pfister, who with fellow University of Chicago biology professor Timothy Wootton has been trekking to the island since the 1980s. See Bellwether /A6
TOP NEWS GASOLINE: Record inCalifornia, A3 ELECTION:Romney'ssofter side, A4