New Oregon Ballot Boxes Opened After Mailouts
Seventeen of twenty requested drop boxes were active, but most arrived after ballots began reaching voters.
By Alejandro Brooks ·
Oregon officials installed new ballot drop boxes in October, but many opened after mailouts began.
Secretary of State Tobias Read secured $618,000 in emergency funds to add 20 drop boxes. This measure responded to concerns about federal interference with mail-in voting. As of this week, 17 of the 20 boxes are operational.
Only three new boxes were ready by October 14, when ballots started arriving in mailboxes. Two more opened in Deschutes and Lane counties on October 15. The remaining boxes went live between October 21 and 26. This timing meant voters had their ballots for about a week before the new locations could accept them.
Tess Seger, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State, explained that logistics delayed the rollout. In Tillamook County, installation required an underground scan for buried utilities and a contractor who could work off-hours. Seger stated that the goal remains to have all 20 boxes ready by Election Day, though reaching 15 is already a strong result.
The emergency funding was part of a $1.25 million package. This sum also covered expanding BallotTrax tracking software statewide and clearing inactive voters from state lists. The state now sends confirmation cards to inactive voters using $480,000 of the funds.
Turnout is high with less than a week left until the midterms. Oregon has counted 26.5% of active voters submitting ballots. That totals roughly 827,300 people out of 3.1 million active voters. In 2022, 19.7% of voters had submitted ballots at the same point in the cycle.
Multnomah County reported 105,900 ballots submitted as of Tuesday. Of those, 68,700 were from Democrats, 18,400 from nonaffiliated voters, 12,700 from Republicans, and 4,200 from independents. Statewide, 321,400 Democrats and 222,000 Republicans have cast ballots so far.
Monday marked the highest single-day total with 208,000 ballots dropped statewide. In Tillamook County, clerk Christy Nyseth was driving to Beaver to unlock the county's newest box at the Nestucca Fire District. This location is the county's tenth drop box. It saves some voters a 15-mile one-way drive. The most popular box remains at the county courthouse, where staff report several hundred people hand-delivering ballots daily.
Source: Willamette Week
