Early Scanning

As Jeff Mapes alluded to in this piece, early scanning had a major impact on the tallying of votes in this election. According to our number crunching Deputy Secretary of State, it is estimated that by 9:00pm, just one hour after the voting deadline, around 83% of ballots had been tallied. This is thanks to a bill that was passed during the 2009 session, which allows for counties to scan ballots received before the deadline and keep that data stored safely and securely until election day. It should be noted that the ballots are ONLY scanned and not tabulated until election day.

We received some kind words from County clerks, thanking us for making early scanning a reality.

Voter Turnout

You may remember the Secretary’s turnout prediction of 62% for this special election. Well according to our OCVR data as of yesterday, 1,280,278 of a total 2,049,703, or almost exactly 62% of registered voters, turned in their ballots this election!

Our elections division has 30 days from election day to certify this special election. We will be sure to share the final data with you as it is made available.

Today, January 26th, is the final day to turn in your ballot for the Special Election! Your ballot must be received by 8pm to be counted. To find a ballot drop off site, please take a look at our Ballot Drop Box Locator.

The election is in full swing on the final day for Oregonians to turn in ballots. For a look at daily returns, you can check out our elections handy (but unofficial) ballot returns table. Multnomah, Clackamas, Lane, Marion, Coos, and Benton Counties are also keeping more detailed and in some cases up-to-date tallies as they become available.

For her part, Secretary of State Kate Brown is taking the day to observe the democratic process with Multnomah County Elections officials as they pickup, drop off, process, and tally ballots.

The film follows a mother and father as they do whatever it takes to find a researcher who might have a cure for their two children’s rare genetic disorder. The disorder is called Pompe Disease, which is caused by mutations in a gene that makes an enzyme called alpha-glucosidase (GAA).  Normally, the body uses GAA to break down glycogen, a stored form of sugar used for energy.  But in Pompe disease, mutations in the GAA gene reduce or completely eliminate this essential enzyme.  Excessive amounts of glycogen accumulate everywhere in the body, but the cells of the heart and skeletal muscles are the most seriously affected¹. What makes this project’s connection to OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital so incredible, is that it just so happens that OHSU Doernbecher is the largest Pompe disease research and treatment center on the West Coast.

During the event, which was held on Nike’s headquarters, Secretary of State Brown also announced that Nike was donating it’s $60,000 location fee from the filming of the movie to the OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.  This money promises to go a long way towards serving the Hospital’s mission to improve the health of children in our region by providing quality and compassionate, family-centered care to every child, every day. It could also be key in helping researchers find the cure to rare diseases like Pompe disease.

This projection is based on a number of trends and some similarities in the numbers between what we’re seeing now and the 2004 special election, which also featured a ballot measure on taxes. Some more in depth facts that informed our projection:

• 2004 February Special turnout on a tax increase was 63%.  At this point in the election in 2004, about 5% more ballots had been returned than have been in this election;
• However, the MLK holiday took a day of mail delivery out, which did not occur in 2004;
• Ballots are coming in later, but in higher numbers than in 2004.  As an example, the first day of returns in 2004 saw 78,530 ballots in, compared to 2,772 in 2010.  Most counties are catching up with higher daily returns as the voting window remains open.
• As voters continue to embrace vote-by-mail, we’ve seen them hold onto their ballots longer, usually resulting in a large spike the weekend before election day, and on election day itself.  We expect we’ll see that again this year.

This is a very important election to the state of Oregon and Oregonians are acting accordingly. We’ve had about 36% of ballots returned so far, with more than 100,000 more coming in each day, which is truly great considering the proximity to the holidays, including the Federal holiday we had last weekend.

Secretary of State Brown encourages all eligible voters to cast their vote and prove her wrong by shattering the 62% prediction!

What percentage of Oregon’s voters do YOU think will vote in next Tuesday’s election?

For more information about what happens after you’ve turned in your ballot, check out our entry from November From The Ballot Box to The Scanner.

1. Mail your ballot in before Friday, January 22nd – After this date, the Postal Service cannot guarantee that it will deliver your ballot on time.

2. Drop your ballot off at an official ballot drop-off site before 8pm on January 26th - If you’re unable to send your ballot in before January 22nd, you can still drop your ballot off at one of many ballot drop-off sites.

To help with the process of finding the closest drop-off site, our Elections Division has created a Ballot Drop Locator, which plots the locations of drop-off sites on an online mapping application. If you’re still having trouble finding a drop-off site, take a look at our County Elections Office guide and give your county’s elections officials a call.

This is a guest entry from Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown

Today I was lucky enough to be invited by the Oregon Student Association to their press conference in which they announced that they had registered a whopping 14,272 students to vote in just 3 months!

With this incredible accomplishment in mind, I want to share a little bit of what I experience on Monday and Tuesday during this tour of seven of Oregon’s university campuses: PCC Sylvania, PCC Casdcade, Mt. Hood Community College, Portland State University, University of Oregon, Oregon State  and Lane Community College.

The first thing I learned is that the students in this state are not sitting idly by while decisions are made in Salem. These students are showing us what civic engagement is all about.

And you should have seen them! Despite the cold and rainy weather, students were out on the streets of Eugene, Corvallis and Portland, fearlessly engaging their peers. Sometimes even after they had said no, or had walked right past without saying a thing.

They understand that sometimes voter registration comes one person at a time, but that each person they register could be the deciding vote. As someone who won her first race by 7 votes, I let them know just how important each and every voter they registered is, and I have to admit, I got caught up in their enthusiasm.

I was originally asked by the Student Association to talk about the role of students in the voting process during a set of ‘class raps’. We had so much fun with our scheduled raps, which sometimes had as many as 500 students in attendance, that we started up a series of ‘Guerilla Raps’, which were class raps in classrooms where we weren’t scheduled to speak. OSA approached professors and asked for permission and we launched right in. It was a great way to reach out to even more students before the registration deadline.

I also got an opportunity to help the students by hitting the streets and registering voters. We came across all kinds of students from all kinds of backgrounds including a couple of 17 year-olds taking advantage of a recent development in Oregon’s voting law, which allows 17 year-old Oregonians to register to vote in the election following their 18th birthday.

I walked away from the two day tour with a tremendous respect for the students in our great state. I saw an amazing level of dedication from those who took their time out of their busy schedules to volunteer. These volunteers are a credit to our state and will insure that the health of our democracy remains strong for another generation. I also came away with a sense that young people are paying attention to the world around them and that sometimes all it takes is their peers giving them information and they will respond.

I want to thank the Oregon Student Association for this opportunity and congratulate them on a tremendous job well done!

Kate Brown is the Oregon Secretary of State

The Albany Democrat Herald explains the stir-up:

The state last week mailed Voters’ Pamphlets to 1.7 million addresses. Backers and opponents paid $500 per statement to the state to have their arguments for and against the measures included.

Kevin Looper of “Our Oregon,” a Portland-based nonprofit, managed to get his arguments supporting the measures — labeled as opposition — placed last in the lineup of arguments against them. He also managed to be first in the opposition column.

This has raised the eyebrows and the ire of a number of Oregon voters, so we wanted to clear any confusion surrounding the process for filing an argument to be placed in the Voter’s Pamphlet and the role of the Secretary of State’s office in that process.

Any individual who files an argument to be printed in the voters’ pamphlet indicates on the filing form whether the argument submitted is in support or opposition to the measure. All arguments are printed in the voters’ pamphlet in the order they are received by our office. Our office then reviews each argument and if it appears that the information regarding a measure number or the designation of whether the argument supports or opposes the measure is incorrect, we contact the author to inquire if they made an error. If the author advises us that it is not an error, we are required to place the argument in the voters’ pamphlet as they have indicated, and in the order received in our office. This process is outlined and dictated by state law in ORS 251.260.

The Secretary of State’s Office does not have the legal authority to verify a given statement’s accuracy nor to edit it for content.

A recent article from the Oregonian provides a little historical background on the topic:

Here’s something to keep in mind: The secretary of state has compiled Voters’ Pamphlets since 1903. It’s a long tradition meant to help the public make important decisions. But, by law, the secretary of state cannot verify the truth and accuracy of statements in the pamphlet.

“We have a pretty strong constitutional protection of free speech in this state,” Secretary of State Kate Brown said Saturday.

Instead of state-issued statements, Brown said the Voters’ Pamphlet provides Oregonians “with a full range of arguments.”

Don’t be surprised if you detect some sarcasm and satire among those statements. The lead-off “argument” in opposition to Measure 66 was submitted by Kevin Looper, who is helping to coordinate the “pro” campaign.

In one of the most outrageous examples, in 2004, the phony “Defense of Heterosexual Breeding Coalition” put a statement in the pamphlet in support of Measure 36, a constitutional amendment recognizing that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

We hope that this clears up any misconceptions that may be out there about this process. If you have any further questions, go ahead and leave us a comment below.

Here are some highlights of where that money was spent:

• The single biggest expense was $1 million to operate and maintain OCVR, the Oregon Central Voter Registration database, required by federal law and paid for in part with federal money.
• The state spent $200,000 to print voter registration forms,
• State agencies spent $2.8 million on voter registration activities
• Counties spent $6.9 million, most of it in payroll costs.

Being the first state to undertake an honest analysis of these costs is a tremendous learning opportunity for the State of Oregon. As Secretary Brown put it, “It’s important to understand that this is the first statewide registration cost survey. So we have no way of knowing whether our costs are high, low or average compared to other states. We’ll learn more as other states take this on.”

And what did we get in terms of measurable gains in registration with this $9.7 million dollars?

Well, we can start with 76,337 (2.8% of those eligible) new registrants from January 1 to the primary election deadline of April 29 of 2008. Add another 144,957 (5.4% of those eligible) registrants from the primary until the general election deadline for an 8.2% total voter registration jump in just one election cycle. But winning registering new voters is only part of the story, a great deal of resources are dedicated to updating voter registration information to insure their accuracy. This includes any address and phone number changes, party registration, etc. for the 2,153,914 registered voters in the State of Oregon, no small task!

Secretary of State Brown was excited about the results of the study and the opportunity to help streamline the voter registration system in Oregon, starting with the opening of the online voter registration in March of 2010. When asked, she said, “Pew has done a terrific job of analyzing costs from all levels of government. This is the first statewide study of its kind in the country and will be a great help to the other states. Knowing the real costs can help us develop a system that spends less on bureaucracy and registers more eligible voters.”

Oregon Secretary of State Brown

Secretary of State Kate Brown said she took steps during her first year in office toward better policing of paid signature-gatherers and promoting alternatives for registration and voting.

Brown likened her 2008 campaign promises to an exercise she attended at the Council of State Governments-West, which she led while still a Democratic state senator. She did the 20 push-ups requested at a session on building credibility, but her counterpart from New Mexico failed.

“The message was clear,” she said at a Marion County DemoForum luncheon. “When you make commitments on the campaign trail, make sure you can deliver on them.”

House Bill 2005, which lawmakers passed during the 2009 session, builds on legislation that Brown shepherded as Senate Rules Committee chairwoman in 2007.

Among other things, the 2009 law holds chief petitioners accountable for the conduct of paid signature-gatherers, and allows the secretary of state or the attorney general to levy maximum civil penalties of $10,000 for legal violations in signature-gathering for ballot-initiative petitions. Civil penalties, which had been $250, can be imposed without the legal burden of proof required in criminal cases.

Also, instead of a single submittal by July in even-numbered years, the law requires paid signature-gathering campaigns to submit signatures monthly.

Brown said the more frequent filings, which apply only to petition campaigns using paid signature-gatherers, will allow more time for state elections officials to verify signatures before the legal deadline. The Oregon Constitution requires verification of petition signatures within 30 days after the filing deadline.

“It is my belief that when we fully implement House Bill 2005, along with the reforms we passed in 2007, Oregonians will have greater confidence that when they vote on initiatives, the initiatives will have gotten on the ballot through legitimate means,” Brown said.

Not part of the new law, but granted by lawmakers, was money in the state budget enabling state elections officials to verify randomly chosen signatures — instead of farming out that task to the 36 counties — and to hire two investigators.

Brown said a statewide voter registration database, required of all states under a 2002 federal law, allows her office to take over verification of signatures for statewide petitions.

Other bills will put Oregon among the handful of states with online voter registration and fax voting — although the latter is restricted to Oregonians on active military duty.

The online system is scheduled to start March 1. It will require eligible voters 18 and older by election day, U.S. citizens and Oregon residents to hold a valid Oregon driver’s license, permit or identification card. A digital copy of the signature on file with the Oregon Department of Transportation will be used to verify a voter’s signature on the back of a ballot envelope.

As is the case with regular registration, voters must affirm they are U.S. citizens. The maximum penalties for violations are five years in prison and a fine of $125,000.

Brown said online registration will allow voters to update their addresses and other changes — and help young people who spend a lot of time online.

“But this is not online voting,” she said. “We are not there yet. As someone who won her first race by seven votes, I want to make sure there is a paper trail that we can do a recount on.”

Brown said the two measures are just small steps toward her larger goal of broadening civic engagement.

Given a September public-opinion survey in which 40 percent of participants said they did not know Oregon has two U.S. senators, Brown said, “we really have our work cut out for us.”

pwong@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6745

Don’t feel bad if you don’t! They both predate the State of Oregon but at one time or another they were the official seals of the territory, which now constitutes our great state! The Oregon Territory and The Provisional Government of Oregon are part of our State’s great history and  our Archives Division is working on a project that will help us all get more familiar with some of the people who lived here during that time.

The Early Oregonians Project combines census, death, probate and other records into a searchable database to help researchers find relevant information about the people who lived in Oregon from 1800 to 1860.

To begin, Archives staff outlined an ‘Early Oregonian Criteria’, to establish just who could be counted as an Oregonian. This task was made difficult by the fact that parts of the territories that made up the Oregon of the time are now prominent sections of Washington, Idaho and Montana. For example, the 1850 census for Oregon Territory included what became Washington Territory as soon as 1853. However, in creating the Early Oregonian Criteria it was decided that individuals living in or born in that part of the Oregon Territory prior to 1853 were to be  included in this database as Early Oregonians.

With a criteria in place, staff began extracting vital data and other relevant information on these early Oregonians.

The initial information for this project was taken from the 1850 and 1860 federal censuses conducted in Oregon. A team of volunteers and student interns reviewed the extracted information and combined entries that appeared on both censuses.

In addition to primary sources, various records from the Oregon State Archives such as probate records, death certificates and marriage records were also searched to identify individuals who appeared to meet the criteria. Currently there are over 105,500 entries representing these early Oregonians.

The database is up now, but what you see today is not what the finished project will look like. As additional features of the database are made available, researchers will be able to view a list of associated records for individuals and request copies from the Archives.

Archives is also looking to YOU for help making this project a success! If you have documentation you would like to contribute to the Early Oregonians Database or a website you think might be helpful in our staff locating more information, send an email to Early.Oregonians@state.or.us and let us know!