Oregon voters began filing their ballots more than three weeks ago, but now, two days after the election, the fate of several candidate races and ballot measures remains uncertain.
At 7 p.m. Wednesday, with 93 percent of the vote counted, Texas Gov. George W. Bush led Vice President Al Gore in Oregon by only 197 votes. A number of pivotal state ballot measures and a handful of local races also remain undecided. Measure 9, which would ban sanctioning homosexuality in public schools, is failing by 3,615 votes, but election officials haven’t publicly reported the measure’s outcome.
With the exception of Florida, which is in the midst of a vote recount, Oregon is the last state in the nation to announce its final vote totals and award its electoral votes to the winner. Jen Stineff, assistant to Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, said the mail-in ballot system played a major role in the ballot backup.
“It’s our first general mail-in election, and we’re treading some new ground,” Stineff said. “A number of ballots in the larger counties still need to be counted.”
She said election offices statewide faced a last-minute rush of voters delivering their ballots from noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday, when Oregon polls closed.
The Lane County Election Office was no exception. Keri Brunig, a volunteer for the office, said a steady line of people wound out the door and around the block from mid-morning until 8 p.m.
Brunig added that the counting process is moving slowly because elections officials have to verify the signature on each ballot before the ballot is counted, which can be time-consuming.
Although the final tally isn’t in, Bush has held a narrow lead in Oregon since the polls closed Tuesday night. This represents a major change from the last three presidential races, when Oregon voters chose Democratic candidates for president.
Dan Estes, political director for the Oregon Republican Party, said a lot of factors have helped give Bush the edge, including the mail-in ballot system and Ralph Nader’s candidacy.
“Nader played a big role,” Estes said. “The Green Party really provided an alternative.”
Estes worked on Oregon’s campaign to elect Bob Dole in 1996, before the advent of mail-in voting, and said he prefers the old-fashioned polls to the new mailing system.
When people go to the polls, he said, a candidate can build momentum and peak on Election Day. With Oregon’s new system, Bush needed to peak three weeks in advance and hold that level until Tuesday, which Estes said costs much more time and money.
But Estes said Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, were able to keep Oregon voters interested, and local volunteers successfully got the candidate’s message to the state’s voters, which is giving him his current lead.
“I have never seen so many people get excited about licking stamps,” he said.
But Oregon Democrats are warning Oregonians not to completely discount Gore.
“It could go in the Democrat column,” said Kathy McShea, a press aide for Forward Oregon, the state Democratic Party. “Ballots are still being counted. The situation is still fluid.”
McShea said the mail-in election caused local Democrats to change their campaign game plans.
“Participation has been off the charts,” she said. “We had a situation where the party infrastructure went through a renaissance.”
But she still believes Oregon could remain a Democratic stronghold for another four years.
“It’s premature to come to a conclusion. Only certain pockets have reported,” she said.