The USPS collection box at Ninth Avenue and Elm Street, one of 15 such blue boxes in Albany.
One thing Albany-area voters don’t have to worry much about is that in our elections, a whole bunch of votes are discarded because they are sent off too late or get hung up in the mail. The number of such ballots turns out to be small.
There was a recent flap over whether the Postal Service could handle the flood of ballots if all states went to mail-only voting because of the pandemic. (Of course it could; it handles many times that volume all the time.)
A reader sent me his thoughts about Oregon’s well-established system of conducting all elections mostly via the mail.
“Oregon probably does one of the best jobs of hosting vote-by-mail,” he wrote. One reason is that Oregon requires all ballots to be on hand by 8 p.m. on election day. It does not count ballots that were mailed before the deadline but arrive late. The postmark does not count.
This demands a certain discipline of voters, and enough sense to realize that if you mail a ballot on Monday, it won’t be delivered before 8 on Tuesday night.
The reader was curious: “My question is, if you know or have the interest in finding out, how many or (what) percentage of mailed-in ballots arrive after the deadline in Linn County?”
Interesting point, I thought. And when I put the question to Linn County Clerk Steve Druckenmiller, he promptly provided the numbers for the last three statewide elections.
In the May 2018 primary election, Linn County counted 28,539 votes, and another 153, or about one-half of 1 percent, were returned too late to be counted.
In the general election of 2018, counted ballots numbered 55,621, and another 163 or 0.29 percent arrived too late. In the primary this May, 36,650 votes were counted, and 202 were not because they were late.
“I also hope you will communicate to your readership,” Druckenmiller wrote, “that every voter is notified by letter from our office if their ballot is received too late to be counted. In addition, if a ballot is not signed or challenged for some other reason, we notify the voter and they are given 14 days after election day to rectify the issue and have the ballot counted. In short, if a ballot is not counted, the voter is notified of the reason by me in writing.”
Time for the inevitable editorial comment: We can’t go back, obviously, but I miss the days when there was no question about how to make your vote count. You went to the polling place, signed your name, cast your ballot, and that was that. (hh)
If the nation would set up mail-in-voting, like Oregon has for the last 20+ years, it should work fine. I think Linn County Clerk Steve Druckenmiller has done an excellent job making sure that all eligible votes are counted!
Yes–Steve, Derrick and his team do a great job, they know how everything works together and provide in-person answers to questions easily.
I like the convenience of mail-in voting, but let’s not be naive about how the “best” system can be manipulated.
For example, Google the names of these Oregonians:
Deanna Swenson, Clackamas Co. elections official
Marjory Gale, Hood River
Betty Clark, Haines
Jeremy Robbins, Portland
Michael Cruz, Portland
Katie Meyer, Medford
Thank you for this report. It is calming to know that the only way my ballot will not be counted is through my own slovenliness.
Next, as there appears to be a degree of hysteria (among some) in America regarding fraud in vote-by-mail systems, could you conduct a similar analysis of that problem? Basically, is there any indication of fraud in Linn or Oregon elections?
Ballot harvesting and campaign meddling appear to be two problems in Oregon’s vote by mail.
This author offers three fixes. I suspect nobody in government is listening though.
https://oregoncatalyst.com/48383-oregon-shows-nation-vote-mail.html
And those who want to vote at the last minute can avoid the US Mail and drop it in a drop box.
Many of your readers live in Benton County. Do they follow the same procedures that Linn County does?
It would seem to me that the procedures used by Linn County, efficient and reliable, should be used by every county.
Yes H.H., I do miss the days of going to a polling place to “cast” your vote. Work places “gave you” an hour or so to do this. It was the patriotic thing to do! BUT, now a days we go to the xtra effort to drive-up to the box at the County building on 5th Street just to make sure our ballots are in.