The Portland teachers union’s all-out effort to ‘cure’ ballots for a school board seat falls just short

The

message

from the Portland Association of Teachers over the past two weeks was clear: Victory for their preferred candidate in the

razor-thin race for the Zone 5 seat

on the Portland Public Schools board was within their grasp.

But to boost 18-year-old Jorge Sanchez Bautista over the finish line, union leaders said, they needed help “curing” about 1,200 ballots that they said had been flagged for missing or non-matching signatures. That was the union’s repeated message to its members and a broad network of volunteers that spans Portland’s most active progressive groups, from the Working Families Party to the Latino Network.

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