Oregon elections chief urges early voting as test of USPS service shows slow mail service

PORTLAND — Following President Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on vote-by-mail in the run-up to the Nov. 3 midterm elections, Oregon’s secretary of state, 36 county clerks and election officials in August conducted an experiment.

They sent and tracked 108 pieces of mail on three separate weekdays to see if they could identify how long it was taking in for the U.S. Postal Service to postmark and deliver regular mail to a county elections office in each of Oregon’s 36 counties.

Secretary of State Tobias Read shared the results of the experiment at a news conference Tuesday. Despite the results showing that all pieces of mail would have been postmarked in time to count in an election if they were a ballot, there were wide discrepancies in timing in eastern Oregon and rural counties due to years of Postal Service budget cuts, including the loss of night pickup at many rural post offices.

One piece of mail delivered to the elections office in Harney County took 11 days to arrive from the day it was sent, though it had been postmarked within a few days. Under Oregon law, ballots that arrive up to a week after Election Day can be counted if they receive a postmark on or before Election Day.

“You can be confident your ballot will be postmarked and delivered on time if you mail it at least a week before election day,” Read said.

That means completed ballots must be in the mail by Tuesday, Oct. 27 to be counted in the Nov. 3 election. If a ballot is not in the mail by then, Read urged Oregonians to take it to a ballot drop box or county elections office.

Election workers will mail ballots beginning Wednesday.

Read also previewed a soon-to-launch statewide ballot tracking website that was previously only available to Oregonians in five counties: Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Yamhill and Marion counties.

Oregonians in the state’s other 31 counties will be able to sign up at OregonVotes.gov/track to receive a text, call or email alerting them when their ballot is sent to their address, when it’s received by the county elections office and when it’s accepted for counting. The site is not yet live but is expected to launch within the next few days.

The statewide expansion of the ballot tracking service is only available for the 2026 midterm election, and it is being funded with part of a $1.25 million allocation in September from the Legislature’s Joint Emergency Board. Some of that money has also been used to add more than 20 new ballot boxes to several across the state, bringing the total across Oregon to more than 300.

Daniel Cortez, president of the Oregon chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, joined Read at the news conference and reiterated his calls to get ballots in the mail at least a week in advance of Nov. 3.

“It used to be postmark meant: when the postal service received that item. Now, it’s when it goes across a machine. And as the secretary said, that could be a few days after originally being dropped off or placed in the mail,” Cortez explained.

He said Oregonians are also welcome to walk up to a USPS retail counter, get a postmark from the clerk on the spot and submit their ballot.

He said his union members, who have handled Oregon’s primarily vote-by-mail system for nearly two decades, will be taking election materials seriously.

“The attacks on vote-by-mail that we’re seeing, both from our nation’s capital and, unfortunately, here in Oregon, are terrible,” he said. “Not only are they an affront to our democracy, but they are attacking my members’ integrity, and trying to say that somehow we will not deliver mail that we have been entrusted to deliver. It’s a sacred trust.”

Read encouraged Oregonians to “remain vigilant” in the face of any voter intimidation attempts over the next three weeks, especially from federal officials. Trump has refused to rule out sending troops to polling locations, and armed National Guard troops have been photographed in front of ballot boxes in Washington, D.C., though Guard officials have said the troops were loitering around the boxes, not guarding them.

Read said if Oregonians notice tampering at ballot boxes or intimidation they should not physically intervene, but either call law enforcement at 911, call their local elections office or call the Secretary of State’s hotline.

“It’s completely unacceptable, but unfortunately, it is not surprising for this administration,” Read said. He added that the recent surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and arrests in the state late last week, including agents who surrounded a fruit and vegetable processor in Brooks to conduct arrests, and who tear-gassed a crowd of protestors in Salem over the weekend, raises questions about federal interference in Oregon close to an election.

“I cannot believe that that timing is coincidental,” he said. “This is another important reminder to know your rights and be prepared to vote this November.”