Portland ballot returns for tomorrow’s election are trending low. Optimists hope it is due to procrastination, but some vote watchers are becoming alarmed.
Since 2008, an average of 64% of Portland’s registered voters have participated in City Council Elections. This year, one day before the election, only 19% of Portland voters have returned their ballots. As the graphic above shows, this is part of low returns for Multnomah County in general, and is off-trend for elections since 2016. Keep in mind that interpretation of these graphs is complicated by a couple of things: 1) the 2022 election, shown with a green line, was not a presidential election—turnout for these off-cycle years is always lower and 2), Oregon changed its ballot return rules in 2021 to allow for ballots postmarked the day of the election to be received for up to seven days. The full procrastination-effect of the new postmark rule has not yet been tested in a presidential election year. (The high-propensity voters of 2022, the off-year, mostly got their ballots in by election day. That might not be true of the larger voting public in a presidential year.)
The yellow bars in the graph show Multnomah County ballots which have been returned over the past couple of weeks. The last bar, today’s return, was disappointingly low, and below the 2022 election line.
Count former Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz in the worried camp, as the re-tweet and comment from transportation designer Jarret Walker shows.
Multnomah County’s election dashboard (below) tells the more complete story. The table at the lower right shows Portland ballot returns of: 15% for District 1; 19.5% for District 2; 20% for District3; and 22% for District 4.
Statistics from the North Star Civic Foundation, a Portland non-profit with a focus on democracy, show that, since 2008, an average of 64% of Portland voters have participated in City Council elections.
I don’t think I have ever been in a position of hoping for procrastination, but here I am. It would be a shame if Trump took Oregon because Portland voters didn’t get their ballots in. Vote folks!
