Oregon Mail Voting: Mechanics Behind the 3.1 Million Ballot Process

More than 3.1 million Oregon voters receive election ballots by mail, a system that originated from a cost-saving idea in 1981 and now governs every election in the state. The process is uniform across all 36 counties, governed by the Oregon Secretary of State’s vote-by-mail manual. Voters return their ballots via prepaid postage or one of approximately 300 dropboxes scattered across the state. Election officials recommended using mail by Tuesday, but dropboxes remain open until 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.

The physical handling of these ballots begins with collection. Election workers visit dropboxes twice daily in urban areas and once daily in rural regions. They carry affidavits to verify their identity and the collection date. Each dropbox is chained in place and contains a fire suppression system. Ballots are placed in locked bags that only the collecting worker can open. These bags are transported to the county clerk’s office for sorting.

At the clerk’s office, ballots are sorted into trays, each paired with a yellow auditing form that tracks quantities and flags anomalies such as missing signatures. This form stays with the batch until the final tally. Staff then run the trays through a machine that counts the ballots and scans the signature on each blue envelope. Workers compare these scanned signatures against voter registration records on a monitor. If a signature does not match, the ballot is referred to election officials for verification. If rejected, the voter receives a notice requesting a new registration signature.

Ballots are removed from their envelopes by an extraction machine. Staff then perform a manual count where two individuals separately count the envelopes and the ballots, comparing their results in silence to verify the total. Verified batches are moved to a holding room. Tallying occurs on machines running Clear Ballot software in a room completely disconnected from the internet. Once counted, ballots are stored in a vault. Counties may tally votes before the 8 p.m. deadline but cannot release results until after that time.

Linn County Clerk Marcie Richey, who has worked in the role since 1993, oversees this process in a region known as the Grass Seed Capital of the World. She noted that the mail system produces fewer errors than in-person polling, which requires training inexperienced staff. Richey stated, "I will take vote-by-mail over poll elections any day." Security measures include cameras at every ballot location, thick mesh glass windows, and motion sensors that alert Richey and local law enforcement to after-hours movement. Custodial staff are barred from ballot rooms until results are certified.

Data suggests the system is secure. A 2020 study by Oregon’s Legislative Fiscal Office found 38 criminal convictions for voter fraud among 61 million ballots cast between 2000 and 2019, a rate of 0.00006%. The Brookings Institution reported a similar average of about four fraud cases per 10 million mail ballots for elections between 2016 and 2022. Oregon law requires ballots to be kept for 90 days after the contest deadline, though a Trump administration executive order seeks to extend this to five years for general elections.

Voters can track the status of their specific ballot through OregonVotes.gov/track. The process ensures that from the moment a ballot enters a dropbox, it is logged, scanned, manually verified, and tallied in an air-gapped environment before being stored in a vault.