Oregon’s place in history is now irrevocably set: Not only is it serving as one of the few crucial swing states, but has garnered national attention for conducting the first-ever all mail-in ballot system.
It is still debatable, however, whether this year’s tense election or the convenience of mail-in ballots brought out more voters than ever before.
Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury projected an 84 percent voter turnout for this year’s election, and by press time, 72 percent of registered voters’ ballots had been cast. As of Nov. 6, 1,183,902 ballots had been returned, 114,878 coming from Lane County. In the 1998 general election, there was only a 59 percent turnout, with 1,160,400 ballots being cast.
Candidates and staff members of various campaigns contribute this high percentage of turnout to it being a presidential election year, and the large number of initiatives on the ballot.
“There is always a larger turnout during Presidential elections. There is also a large number of ballot measures on this year’s ballot,” said Phil Barnhart, the Democratic candidate for the District 40 race. “We are facing enormously destructive ballot measures, that if passed, Oregon would cease to be Oregon. A lot of voters know that.”
Dr. Bill Young, the Republican candidate for the District 40 race, agreed.
“We had a greater turnout in this election than past elections,” Young said. “This is because of the motivation that this state may have great impact on the national ballot.”
State Sen. Tony Corcoran, D-Cottage Grove, said the voter turnout for this year is remarkable.
“For 17 days people have been voting,” Corcoran said. “More people voted earlier than they expected.”
The strategies to encourage voters to get out and cast their ballot consisted of many phone calls, walking door to door, and waving to motorists as they drove by.
“We were walking door to door for days,” said Ron Craig, Democratic campaign staff member. “It was scary because 50 percent of who we talked to were going to mail their ballots in on Sunday. We had to tell them they needed to drop it off themselves. It’s too bad because a lot of elderly people couldn’t get out to vote, and we probably lost a lot of votes because of it.”
Volunteers spent many hours walking door to door collecting ballots, and making phone calls to encourage people to get out and vote. Volunteers also worked on the Get Out the Vote campaign, which was aimed at getting college students to vote.
“We bugged a lot of people,” Barnhart said. “The earlier people voted, the less calls they would get. Registered voters have no excuse this year for not voting.”
The mail-in ballot system also played a positive role in getting people to vote, although many candidates had problems with this system of voting.
Politicians had mixed reactions to the mail-in system of voting.
Jeff Miller, Republican candidate for the District 41 race, said this year’s election was long and tiring because of the mail-in ballot system.
“We had to constantly campaign because we didn’t know when people were going to cast their votes,” Miller said.
Corcoran said that while the standard assumption is that mail-in ballots increase voter turnout, that might not always be the case.
“It is hard to analyze for sure, but we are watching [its effect] closely,” Corcoran said. “This is a new world and is happening for the first time.”
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