In the last six months, Oregon’s election infrastructure came under fire when it was revealed that the Department of Motor Vehicles’ service office had mistakenly registered 1,600 people to vote who had not offered proof of citizenship. Fortunately, only a fraction of those people voted, with the Oregon Department of Justice investigating three people criminally. Despite the negligible difference the mistake made in the election, Republican Senator David Brock-Smith from Port Orford introduced Senate Bill 210 in the Oregon Senate, which would allow voters to approve changes to the 2026 election. These changes would include reverting to largely in person polling places for voting (with exception to military, people overseas, and those unable to travel) which would be required to be open at least eight hours a day on election day, requiring voters to submit a photo ID before voting in all cases, and the Oregon Secretary of State and county officials would establish rules for how many polling places are required in each of the state’s 36 counties.
The bill has been very controversial, with 9,000 pieces of testimony being submitted by the time the bill received a hearing on March 31, with the vast majority of them being against the bill. There was so much testimony sent that it made the Oregon Legislative Information Website lag, causing Brock-Smith to dub the bill “the bill that broke OLIS” in testimony to the Senate Rules Committee. More than 150 people signed up to testify on the bill. Proponents argue the bill should be passed due to suspicion on the accuracy and security of Oregon elections, raising concerns about dead people voting and ballot box stuffing. Opponents of the bill argue that vote-by-mail is secure, crediting it as a major reason why Oregon has one of the highest voter turnout rates in the nation.
The claims about voter fraud with mail voting are largely unfounded, with Oregon using mail voting exclusively since 2000, and the Legislative Fiscal Office of Oregon found that from 2000 to 2019, voter fraud was only at a rate of 0.00006%. Not only is voting by mail secure, it has contributed to our high voter turnout, with 75% of eligible voters voting in the 2024 election compared with the national average of 64%. Even if the arguments against mail-in voting were valid, its popularity still means that the bill is unlikely to pass. According to Portland DHM Research in 2018, 71% of voters prefer to vote by mail, 18% said they want in-person voting as an option, and only 2% said they would prefer exclusively in-person voting. Not just the popularity of mail voting, but also the state government itself would make this bill difficult to pass, as currently Oregon has a Democratic trifecta of control over the Oregon Senate, House of Representatives, and Governor. Whether or not you agree with this bill, regardless of the facts on mail voting, it is unlikely to actually pass due to mail voting’s popularity and the Democratic controlled state government.
