NEWS UPDATE FROM STATE REPRESENTATIVE DAVID GOMBERG: Big Day Tomorrow! Please Be Part of It

By Representative David Gomberg, House District 10

Tuesday, the 5^this, of course, Election Day.

My greatest hope for this election is that when it is over, we see a peaceful transition of power, heal the divides that are straining friendships and communities, and begin to respect and care for each other again.

If you have not yet voted, please do so! I encourage you to use ballot drop sites rather than mail. Find locations here. You can, of course, also mail your ballot and it will be counted as long as it is postmarked on the 5^th or earlier. So taking it to the Post Office is better than a mailbox.

A 2022 rule allows mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they’re received within seven days of the election. This improvement ensures that every vote cast on time gets counted. It may also delay the results of close races because it will take a few days for all the votes to be counted.

You can track your ballot’s progress on the Secretary of State website by entering your name and date of birth in My Vote.

Initial results are released beginning at 8 pm, November 5, and will continue to be updated through election night and the days following. Final results, especially for close contests, may not be known until the election is certified and the official abstract of votes is published. Final certified results will be available 37 days after the election.

You can access statewide voting results here.

Each county also posts election results and updates them at regular intervals.

Between election night and the date the election results are certified, the unofficial results will change. This change represents ballots that were postmarked by 8 pm on election night, being received later and counted.

The number of ballots turned in to county election offices in Oregon surpassed 1 million by the close of business Wednesday. According to the state Elections Division, elections offices received ballots back from about 34% of registered voters.

In total, county elections offices reported receiving ballots from just 38% of Oregon voters overall by end of day Thursday. Lincoln County is at 47.7%, Benton at 47.3% and Lane at 40.8%. Meanwhile, Clackamas is at 26.1% and Multnomah County is at 30.8%.

Portland is undergoing a historic change to both its election system and its entire form of government. Our largest city will use ranked-choice to elect 12 new city councilors and a new mayor.

A glance at their ballot may help explain why turnout is lagging there. (Note that Measure 117 does not require ranked choice voting in local elections.)

The decrease in pre-Election Day voting in Oregon this cycle echoes a nationwide trend. Total Oregon turnout reached 80% in 2016 and 82% in 2020, the Secretary of State’s Office reported in certified tallies for those years.

As of last month, Oregon had nearly 1.02 million registered Democrats and 743,000 registered Republicans. Unaffiliated voters are the largest group, at 1.1 million.

About 51% of registered Oregon Republicans returned their ballots as of Thursday, according to Oregon Elections Division data. Democrats trailed slightly behind with a 46% return rate thus far. Unaffiliated voters dragged down the average, with just 22% of them getting ballots to their county elections office as of Thursday. Unaffiliated voters typically vote at lower rates overall.

Here in Lincoln County, two election workers — and for the first time a sheriff’s deputy — will be posted at each of the eight collection boxes Tuesday night, to enforce the 8 p.m. cutoff and then take the last of the ballots to the courthouse. Ballots will not be counted if they are handed in after 8 p.m. Tuesday.

The clerk’s office has been counting ballots since October 23 and will release the first results shortly after 8 p.m. Tuesday, with updates at 5 p.m. Wednesday and again at 5 p.m. Friday, November. 8. The fourth and final but unofficial results will come at 5 p.m. on November 12.

A story in Yachats News reports, that by the time votes are announced, Lincoln County election workers will have handled ballots seven times and be “observed” at least twice by volunteers from the local Republican and Democrat parties.

Here’s how ballots are handled:

Each evening, two county clerk employees collect the ballots from the eight drop-off sites in padlocked boxes;
Once envelopes reach the clerk’s office, employees spread them on a table, sort them into piles of 20, record the total, and put them in containers;
The ballot envelope contains a unique bar code that identifies each voter. Two employees use a special wand to read the barcode, which loads the voter’s information into a secure, county computer. An employee – under a camera’s eye – then calls up each computer file to check the signature on the ballot with the voter’s registration card;
If there are issues with a signature, the employee puts the ballot aside to be double-checked – and decided – by County Clerk Amy Southwell. If Southwell decides the signature does not match, the clerk’s office tries to contact the voter and get a new, signed registration card.
The approved envelopes – with the ballot still inside – are then taken to a separate room where four election workers of different parties sort them by precincts. Then they are run through a machine that opens the envelope and put on a table where the workers take out the additional “secrecy” envelope inside and remove the ballot. This year two observers, after locking up their personal items and cell phones, will sit on the other side of a large window to watch the counting process.
The workers check each ballot for issues such as misplaced marks and then double-check any issues with a second worker. Once they agree, the ballots are put in another locked box.
The actual ballots – which have no identifying codes or marks connecting them to an individual voter – are then run through a scanner by Southwell (and no one else) to record each vote. The tabulations are kept in the computer’s hard drive – which is not connected to the internet – and not released until after 8 p.m. November 5th.

The observers – volunteers from the two parties working in two-hour shifts — have been sitting in the clerk’s office and in a second-floor hallway of the county courthouse for the past seven days.

Regular readers know I love groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings – celebrations of improvements and evolution in our communities. And nothing makes me happier than to attend a ribbon cutting for a project where I first attended the groundbreaking as well!

That’s exactly what happened in Philomath Friday with the completion of the Downtown Safety and Streetscape Improvements Project. This $18 million effort has produced new pavement, improved pedestrian and bicycle safety, and an attractive people-friendly, pedestrian-oriented downtown.

Breaking ground two years ago and cutting the ribbon this week.

I took a moment to talk about the importance of coordinating local, state and federal investments to make big projects in small cities happen. And I added that it takes money, but it also takes vision and leadership at so many different levels along the stretch of the project to make these kinds of things come to fruition.

Finally, I told the story of Highway 20, a Medal of Honor Highway and the longest continuous highway in North America. When the ribbon was cut on improvements to the Highway several years ago, I asked ODOT to erect a sign – Boston: 3,365 miles.

The point was that this project in Philomath was important locally, but also part of something larger. And as people traversed Highway 20 on a historic journey east or west, I wanted them to slow down and recognize that this small timber town was and is something special.