Oregon’s vote-by-mail system has long been credited as a incredible achievement in democracy, boasting one of the highest voter turnouts in the country, with numbers as high as nearly 79 percent of registered voters coming to the polls (or rather, mailing the polls in).
But with the May 20 primary approaching, and with a massive number of new registrations from first-time college-age voters, we can expect that the vote-by-mail system has a large collection of virgins to democracy who may still be awkward with the whole process of getting their voted ballot into their secrecy envelope.
This primary is an important one for Oregon, too. It is projected by pundits to be a kind of semi-final stop on this two-year-long magical journey, our state being the very state where Barack Obama is likely to turn Hillary Clinton’s statistically improbable chance for the nomination into an actually impossible one.
The important date, therefore, is May 20. That’s the day where you have to absolutely make sure your ballot makes its way from relaxing on top of the Xbox to the Lane County Bureau of Elections, which has a white drop box on the lower level of the EMU. The very last minute to have it in is 7:59 p.m., so no matter how sweet the party was the night before, I’d make sure you’re up by at least 5 in the afternoon.
If you’re nostalgic for the good old days of voting in person, you can actually go to a polling place between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. on May 20 at the County Elections office. No one really does this, as it’s even more inconvenient than having to mail in your ballot. If you do go down there, you get the pleasure of filling out your mail-in ballot in the office and submitting it immediately to the Elections Bureau. In sum, this really makes no sense at all, but if you still burn with desire to do it, you can find the Elections office at 275 W. 10th Ave, one block west of the public library.
It’s also good to remember, if you’re voting by mail, that postmarks don’t count. I don’t know why this is, as I’m from Washington, where we not only pump our own gas but also use postmarks to determine when ballots are valid. But here in Oregon, the Elections Bureau or one of its surrogate official drop-boxes has to physically receive the ballot on May 20 or before, and doesn’t care how early it was postmarked. This means if you still want to mail it in, and not hand your precious vote over to a white box in the EMU/downtown, it might be a good idea to actually vote and mail it by May 15. Oh Jesus, I just realized: That’s like, Thursday. The other stupid thing about the mailing process is that it requires postage, which is hard to come by these days. The easiest thing to do is drop-box it, but if you actually have stamps, then knock yourself out.
There’s one other added twist to this whole process, which is probably my personal favorite. If you changed your registration in the last few days before the election (like, last month) there is an off chance you’ll receive not one but TWO ballots this year. This is when it’s best to know what party you registered with, so you can make sure your ballot is the right one. If you’re a registered Democrat, the name “Barack Obama” will be on it. If you’re not, it won’t. If it isn’t, but you distinctly remember changing your registration, it’s likely you either just received or will receive tomorrow a second ballot that looks different. We’re supposed to vote the most recent ballot we receive, as the Elections Bureau will invalidate the first one.
And one final note to this vote-by-mail story: If you have questions, need to check if you’re registered, or haven’t received your ballot yet, the best thing to do is call the Lane County Bureau of Elections at (541) 682-4234. Don’t call me: While I’d love to chat, I really don’t have the authority to fix ballot problems. A man can dream though, a man can dream.
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