Cecilia Ramirez casts her ballot in person at the Multnomah County election office in Portland, Ore., Nov. 2, 2020.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
More than 2.3 million Oregonians voted in this year’s general election, according to unofficial results from the Oregon secretary of state, up from more than 2 million Oregonians who voted in the 2016 general election.
Still, the percentage of voter turnout between the two elections is similar — both at about 80%.
That’s because Oregon also saw a significant increase in the number of registered voters in the state in the past four years. The number of registered voters has increased by about 400,000 people from 2016 to 2020, according to data from the Oregon secretary of state.
A large amount of those newly registered voters can be attributed to Oregon’s motor voter law, which automatically registers Oregonians as non-affiliated voters when they obtain or renew a driver’s license, ID card or permit from the DMV.
From 2016′s general election to September 2020, the most recent month with specific voter registration data from the Oregon secretary of state, the number of unaffiliated voters in Oregon rose by more than 250,000.