Oregon election officials say Thursday is the last day for Portland-area voters to mail in ballots for the May primary with a guarantee they’ll arrive in time to be counted.
And, amid coronavirus, they’re giving voters extra encouragement to use the mail-from-home option rather than flock to a drop box.
Some rural Oregon counties say the deadline to mail one’s ballot with confidence is even earlier. The Deschutes County elections office’s official guidance was to mail ballots no later than Tuesday.
Voters will still have until 8 p.m. Tuesday to drop their ballot into an official drop box, including at many libraries as well as at county election offices. In Multnomah County, voters can use the 24-hour book drop at each library to safely and securely deposit ballots.
At the end of the day Tuesday, 520,000 of Oregon’s 2.85 million registered voters, or 18%, had returned ballots.
That suggests turnout is just a bit behind the pace set in 2016, when the hotly contested Democratic primary race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton fueled a high eventual turnout for a May election: 54%. That participation of participation was achieved after voters turned in an avalanche of 385,000 ballots on Election Day as well as extra-large numbers in the two or three days before that.
It’s unclear whether a final-days surge will happen this time around. Elections officials are urging voters not to rush to potentially crowded ballot drop-off sites at the last minute this year but rely on the mail. This is the first time voters don’t have to find a stamp or pay its price to mail in their ballot, since the ballot envelopes have prepaid postage thanks to lawmakers.
So far, turnout is highest in some of the usual early turnout leading counties in rural Oregon, including Wheeler (35% so far), Grant (32%) and Harney (also 32%).
In the Portland area, turnout matches or just trails the statewide average -- which is unusual this far before an election. Normally, voters in the three-county metro area turn in ballots much later than their statewide counterparts, with Portland voters in particular tend to engage in an Election Day stampede to drop boxes. But at the end of Tuesday, Multnomah and Clackamas counties both matched the statewide turnout rate of 18% and Washington County voters had hit 17%.
Elections offices are taking new steps to protect workers who open and process ballots this year.
Multnomah County, which normally hires 250 temporary workers, many of them over 60, has reduced that number to 150 this year to allow for additional spacing, said spokeswoman Jessica Morkert-Shibley. Many of those it has hired are younger than the usual crew, including county workers reassigned from other departments, said Multnomah Elections Director Tim Scott.
“Most of our long-time on-call workers are in high-risk categories and have opted out of working in this election,” he said
Workers handling the counties ballots this year wear masks and gloves as they do that work.
-- Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@oregonian.com; @OregonianPol
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