Oregon residents are making history in the first exclusively vote-by-mail presidential election.
With ballots in the mail or already in the hands of voters, the next step is awaiting the turnout results for the election. Some ballots have already started to come in, Lane County Elections Chief Annette Newingham said.
“We’re just shy of 190,000 registered voters [in Lane County],” Newingham said. “I think the vote-by-mail has the potential of giving us a historic turnout.”
The last time a presidential election was close until Election Day was eight years ago, when Lane County had an 85 percent voter turnout. That is a figure Newingham expects to match during this year’s election, in which the presidential candidates are in a dead heat.
Newingham said vote-by-mail should also boost turnout.
“This is the first time in Oregon and in the nation that federal-level candidates have been elected by vote-by-mail,” said Priscilla Southwell, the University political science department chair.
In 1996, Oregon performed its first vote-by-mail senate election. In response to public criticism of the process, Southwell performed a survey of the 1996 vote-by-mail election, in conjunction with the Oregon Survey Research Laboratory.
“There are concerns that there is a greater chance of voter fraud and negative domestic influence,” said State Sen. Tony Corcoran, D-Cottage Grove. “But I think the positive outweighs the negative.”
Southwell agreed, saying that though there were concerns about vote-by-mail, they are for the most part unfounded.
“There was a lot of speculation in the media coverage about vote-by-mail, and not a lot of evidence,” Southwell said. “There were concerns about fraud, and that a vote-by-mail might favor one party or another … A lot of people find it difficult to vote [and vote-by-mail] makes it easier.”
She found that 76.5 percent of the 1,225 respondents favored vote-by-mail elections over the traditional polling place elections. Respondents said vote-by-mail was more convenient and less time-consuming.
Many of the inconveniences of poll place voting have been neutralized by the ability to vote in your own home, ASUO Student Affairs Director Brian Tanner said.
“With the number of ballot measures and candidates, voting out of the convenience of your home allows you to fully digest the info at your own pace,” he said.
To help students take advantage of the convenience vote-by-mail election provides, the ASUO made voter registration their primary goal for the fall term. The efforts of the campaign contributed to the more than 5,500 University students registered.
“One of the difficulties is that college students move so much, it handicaps students from getting their voter registration filled out on time,” Tanner said. “That’s why it was such an intense campaign on this campus.”