Steve Bauman, right, and Paul Butler, elections workers, collect ballots from a drop box in Keizer on Thursday, October 23. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
Oregonians who haven’t yet cast a ballot in the Nov. 3 election have a little over 24 hours to make their voices heard in one of the most contentious elections in recent U.S. history.
Two-thirds of Oregonians registered to vote have already cast their ballots. That includes more than 136,000 Marion County voters and 38,000 Polk County voters, about 63% turnout for each county.
Ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, so it’s too late to drop ballots in the mail – the postmark doesn’t count. Instead, voters need to find a county election drop box.
Marion and Polk county locations in Salem and Keizer are on the map below, but voters can return ballots to any official drop box in Oregon. Election workers will timestamp it and forward it to the appropriate county to be tallied. That can happen after Election Day.
Marion County’s full list of boxes is here and Polk County’s is here.
(Map by Saphara Harrell/Salem Reporter)
If you’re a registered voter but never got a ballot or need a new one, you can vote in-person at your county elections office through 5 p.m. Monday and from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
That’s 555 Court St. N.E. for Marion County, which has in-person voting set up on the ground floor. Polk County’s election office is at 850 Main St. in Dallas.
Most voters exercising that in-person voting option never received a ballot in the mail, Marion County Clerk Bill Burgess said, but they see other reasons too, including a county worker this year whose dog chewed up their ballot.
Voters can also vote in-person if they mailed their ballot back but it’s not yet showing as received, said Polk County chief elections clerk Cole Steckley.
Voters can easily check whether their ballot has been received on the Secretary of State’s website.
Steckley said a ballot sent back a week or more ago that hasn’t been received may be lost in the mail. Voters can guard against that by checking the status, then showing up in person if needed. A ballot received after 8 p.m. Nov. 3 won’t count, no matter how early it was postmarked.
Anyone in line to get a replacement ballot by 8 p.m. on Tuesday can vote, though Steckley said showing up earlier would be good.
Election workers can pull up a voter’s registration in a statewide database, mark their earlier ballot invalid and issue them a new ballot in person, Burgess said. The earlier ballot would show up as a duplicate when the envelope is scanned at the clerk’s office, preventing the ballot from being counted so no one’s vote is counted twice.
Burgess said the process is simple. Voters don’t need identification, though having a driver’s license or ID card will help election workers look up the registration faster.
The voter’s signature on the ballot envelope is used to make sure the correct person is voting, he said. Impersonating someone else to vote is a felony, and Burgess said the “severity of the penalty versus the small amount of gain possible” means fraud is virtually nonexistent.
A recent nonpartisan review from Oregon’s legislative fiscal office backs him up.
The study found a total of 38 voter fraud convictions statewide over a 19-year period where 60.9 million ballots were cast. That’s a fraud rate of 0.00006%.
Marion County is prepared for a surge of Election Day voters and has plans to mark a clear line outside if needed. Burgess said lines for in-person voting are rare, but they do happen.
County workers will be at each ballot drop box between 7 and 7:30 p.m. election night to make sure the final minutes of voting are orderly. If there’s a line to drop off ballots, they’ll mark it clearly and ensure anyone in line by 8 p.m. will still be able to submit their ballot, Burgess said.
Drop boxes are locked promptly at 8 p.m. and ballots removed so no late-returned ballots are counted. The final collection is handled by at least two workers per drop box.
Burgess said his office notifies voters if their mailed ballot was returned too late to be counted.
Election officials in Marion and Polk counties are busy scanning ballots and preparing to release preliminary vote tallies just after 8 p.m.
That work began on Oct. 27, one week before the election.
Oregon has never had definitive election results on election night, Burgess said, and this year won’t be any different.
Ballot returns posted on election night are often “fairly indicative of trends,” Burgess said, but calling them results is inaccurate.
“All those are just projections. The final numbers are not available until we certify,” he said.
Apparent results can change overnight, as happened in Oregon’s May primary for secretary of state. After an initial 1.15 million votes were counted on Tuesday, May 19, state Sen. Mark Hass had a lead of about 10,000 votes in the Democratic primary for secretary of. state.
News outlets reported that Hass had won. But his lead evaporated as more votes were counted. Days after the election and with a more full ballot count, Hass conceded the race to state Sen. Shemia Fagan.
By law, counties have until 20 days after Election Day to certify their results.
That’s to ensure every legally cast vote is counted, Burgess said. While ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, thousands of ballots may be processed days or even a few weeks later.
Those typically fall into two categories: ballots with signature issues, which voters can resolve as long as 14 days after Election Day, and ballots returned on time to another county, which are forwarded to the correct county for processing.
Voters with a mismatched or missing signature on their ballot will be notified by mail and have until Nov. 17 to correct the issue by returning a signed declaration to their county elections office.
Burgess said in Marion County, he expects the first tally of votes released to include all ballots received through the end of the day Monday. Given the high turnout to date, Burgess said that count should reflect at least 70% of the vote.
The county will release at least one more count Tuesday night, Burgess said. They may post results close to 10 p.m. and again near midnight, but tht will depend on how many ballots are returned just before 8 p.m.
In Polk County, Steckley said their first report will include about two-thirds of cast ballots. The office tries to post a second report later in the night which will include nearly all votes cast.
By Wednesday, both offices should have a tally of nearly all ballots cast, but that still won’t include some valid ballots collected by other counties.
Anyone with election questions can call their clerk’s office for help. Marion County can be reached at (503) 588-5041and Polk County at (503) 623-9217.
SUPPORT ESSENTIAL REPORTING FOR SALEM – A subscription starts at $5 a month for around-the-clock access to stories and email alerts sent directly to you. Your support matters. Go HERE.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
