Election Day in Oregon is Tuesday, November 3. If your ballot still hasn’t turned up, here is the plan I posted and how it lines up with Oregon’s own rules.
The short version
Find your county office and show up demanding your ballot. Call their office from a recorded line, since Oregon is a one-party state so you have them on the record telling you your ballot is there and has no problems. Get that on a recording and vote. They have delayed me and my wife for 3 weeks after their online system failed to update after 4 attempts.
The fix is in; break it by showing up in person and get a paper copy and vote immediately.
How it played out
Here is what I was posting while it was happening.
We moved last month, & here in Oregon everything is mail-in, so when we found that after 3 attempts at changing our address, their system refused to update. Calling for replacement ballots in the morning…
They are so incredibly clueless…. As long as you’re a Republican.
…You mailed my ballot to the wrong address, after 3 address corrections using your system, you still have the wrong address and sent yet another one to the wrong address.
You can’t get anything right yet.
My ballot came the day I wrote the post at the top, and my wife and I mailed it right away. I didn’t have to vote in person, so what follows is general advice, not an account of what I did.
What to do
Here is what Oregon’s own rules say about getting a ballot in person. Each point links to its source.
- Go to your county elections office. Oregon mails everyone a ballot, but state law lets you get a replacement if your ballot is lost, destroyed, spoiled or not received (ORS 254.470(9)). You can ask by phone, in writing, online or in person (ORS 254.480).
- Timing. A county does not have to mail a replacement after the fifth day before the election, so now you pick it up in person (ORS 254.470(9)). County elections offices are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day, and anyone in line at 8 p.m. still gets to vote (Oregon Secretary of State; ORS 254.470(12)). Hours on other days vary by county, so call ahead.
- At the counter. The county checks your registration, makes sure no ballot has already come back from you, and marks the replacement so it can be identified. You sign a replacement ballot request form (ORS 254.480). Where ballots are issued, the county has to provide private places to mark them, so you can vote right there and hand it in (ORS 254.472).
- ID. The replacement-ballot law asks the county to verify your registration and have you sign the form. It does not call for ID (ORS 254.480). Call ahead and ask what your county wants to see, and bring your license anyway.
- Your old ballot. It gets deactivated. The state says the most recently issued ballot is the one that counts, and the return envelopes carry unique barcodes so one voter cannot return two (Oregon Elections Division FAQ). If the first one shows up later, do not vote it.
- If you moved. Ballots are not forwarded. Update your registration on My Vote and call your county elections office for your options (Oregon Secretary of State).
- Need help marking it? Any voter can get help from a person they choose, other than an employer or union representative, and voters with disabilities can mark a ballot online with a screen reader, then print and return it (Oregon Secretary of State).
- Returning it. It is November 2, so do not count on the mail. Drop boxes take ballots until 8 p.m. on Election Day, November 3, and anyone in line at 8 p.m. may still drop theirs off (Oregon drop box locator). You can also hand it in at your county elections office by 8 p.m. A ballot that reaches another county’s office is forwarded to the right one, but your own county is the safe choice (ORS 254.470(6)). A mailed ballot needs a postmark on or before Election Day and must arrive within seven days (ORS 254.470), but the state’s mail-by date was October 27 and after that it says to ask a post office clerk for a hand postmark (Oregon Secretary of State). A drop box or the office is the safer choice.
Read that again: state law doesn’t require you to show ID to walk out with a replacement ballot. At the counter, the check is your registration and a signature on a request form. The signature on your return envelope still gets checked later, but that leads right back to the gray area on signatures below. Put it all together and you’ve got a security hole you could drive a truck through.
I don’t trust a system that let its voter rolls sit for years. Oregon fought off the Justice Department in court over its rolls this year, then settled with Judicial Watch, and so far it has ordered just 160,000 of roughly 800,000 inactive records canceled. Add a DMV that registered 1,952 people without proof of eligibility, and a replacement ballot that state law doesn’t require ID to get, and I call that an opening that shouldn’t be there. The state says none of it changed an outcome, but the count stays open until certification on December 10, and with a system like that I’d rather see it fixed than trust it.
If they tell you your ballot is “there”
That is the line to get on the record. A record that says your ballot was mailed does not mean you got it, and “not received by the elector” is one of the reasons Oregon law gives for a replacement (ORS 254.470(9)). Check My Vote first. If it says a ballot came back from you, the county cannot issue another (ORS 254.480). If it says mailed, ask for the replacement.
On recording: you can record a phone call you are part of. To record an in-person conversation, everyone in it has to be told (ORS 165.540).
You can check your ballot status on My Vote, find your county office on the county list, or use the state’s free ballot tracker.
Watch the signature
This is all part of the Liberal grift in Oregon: Now they are telling you they’re going to be tough on signatures.
The vast majority of registrations are through their online portal, which only offers a signature by using your mouse. I don’t know about you, but I can’t make that signature match my paper signature which will be on my ballot…
If they start throwing ballots out wholesale, this must absolutely be challenged, because they are inserting an opportunity to cheat into this system.
Nobody’s throwing ballots out in one big pile. But in a single county in 2024, more than 4,700 ballots flagged for signatures were never fixed and never counted, and in a close race that’s more than enough to matter. Check your ballot tracker, and if you get a notice, answer it.
If your envelope is unsigned or the signature does not match, the county mails you a notice and you have until the 21st day after the election to fix it (ORS 254.431; Oregon ballot tracker FAQ). Until then the ballot is not counted, but it is not thrown out either. If a mismatch is still unresolved after the 21st day, the registration goes inactive.
Some voters are checked against a DMV signature, others against whatever was submitted online. When the yardstick changes from voter to voter, you’ve built a gray area, and gray areas get exploited.
Then vote
Check your registration. Make sure your ballot counted. Then vote.
From “Enforcing Federal Law Is Not Voter Intimidation” on Dukertech
VOTE RED Down the ballot here in Oregon! We desperately need a change of leadership to turn this wreck around!
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