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With less than an hour before polls close, voters drop ballots at the box at Multnomah County Elections Division offices, Portland, Ore., May 21, 2024.
Conrad Wilson / OPB
Fewer Oregonians have returned their ballots so far this year compared to prior elections.
With less than a week to go before Election Day, about 29% of registered voters have turned in ballots, according to numbers published by the Oregon Secretary of State Wednesday.
That’s less than the total from around the same time in 2016, when about a third of registered voters had returned their ballots, and 2020, when more than half had done so.
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John Horvick, a pollster and the senior vice president of DHM Research says it’s difficult to compare this year’s numbers to 2020. That’s partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted people to vote earlier, and new rules that allow people to postmark their ballot by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
“We’re about right where we’d expect to be at this point,” Horvick said.
So far, about 36% of registered Democrats and 39% of registered Republicans have returned their ballots. Nonaffiliated voters are the state’s largest voting bloc, with more than 1.1 million voters, but only 16% of them have returned their ballots.
Two of Oregon’s most populous counties have reported a lower percentage of voters turning in their ballots than anywhere else. In Multnomah County, nearly 23% of voters have returned their ballots; in Clackamas County, it’s 18%.
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Taken together, the tri-county area, which leans Democrat and accounts for more than 42% of the state’s voters, has reported less than a quarter of its ballots returned. However, Horvick anticipates that things will change within the next week.
“The idea that Democrats aren’t going to turn out to vote against Donald Trump, I think, is mistaken,” he said.
Clackamas County Clerk Catherine McMullen said voters may be holding onto their ballots because they don’t have to postmark or return them in person until 8 p.m. on Nov. 5. McMullen added, “It’s human nature to procrastinate.”
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“It’s hard to compare one election to the other, but I think we are on track to 80% turnout,” said McMullen, who is recommending that voters mail in their ballots by Friday, Nov. 1.
Meanwhile, five rural Oregon counties — Wheeler, Wallowa, Grant, Curry and Gilliam — have reported turnout rates upwards of 40%.
In Deschutes County, where about 39% of ballots have reportedly been returned, clerk Steve Dennison noted that turnout is lower compared to the 2020 election, but the county’s totals are higher than other parts of the state. He, too, anticipates a turnout upwards of 80%.
“We’re halfway there here in Deschutes County,” he said. “And so we have a lot more to go, and I look forward to the voters participating, and boy, I do hope they do it sooner rather than later.”
Emily Cureton Cook contributed to this report.