Elections officials recommend using drop boxes; Lane County adds 4

Presenter: This is KEPW Whole Community News for Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. Today is the last day to register to vote for the Nov. 3 election. Here’s Secretary of State Tobias Read:

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): Today’s the voter registration deadline, and tomorrow ballots start to go in the mail. Today I want to go over some of the practical steps that every eligible Oregonian should take to vote with confidence.

First off, I’m calling on all Oregonians to remain vigilant in the face of any attempts to intimidate voters that we might see over the next three weeks.

President Trump has refused to rule out sending troops to polling locations, and we’ve already read reports of armed troops stationed in front of ballot boxes in Washington, D.C. 

It’s completely unacceptable, but unfortunately it is not surprising for this administration. And here in Oregon, our communities and immigrant families are dealing with a surge in violent and disruptive ICE activity, and I cannot believe that that timing is coincidental.

This is another important reminder to know your rights and be prepared to vote this November. 

I highly recommend that every eligible Oregon voter go online to make sure that they’re registered and that their information is up to date. People can register for the first time or update their information at OregonVotes.gov.

The deadline to register for the first time is midnight tonight. Of course, you must be an American citizen, a resident of Oregon, and at least 16 years of age. You won’t be able to vote unless you are 18 years of age by Election Day. 

You can update all of that information through Election Day, but the sooner you make those updates, the better we want your ballot to get where it needs to be in your mailbox and in your hands, with enough time for you to fill it out and return it.

Once you’ve checked your registration, your next step is to make sure you’re signed up for notifications about your ballot. Very soon, all Oregon voters are going to be able to sign up for our new statewide ballot tracking system at OregonVotes.gov/track. We’re going to send out an update as soon as that site is live.

It’s a quick, easy, and secure way to know that your vote is counted because when you sign up. You’ll get updates at three key moments when your ballot is sent to you, when your ballot is received by your county elections office, and when your ballot is accepted for counting from outbound to received, you’ll be in the know and when you sign up, you can choose to be updated by email, by text, or by phone call.

In fact, you can pick all three if you want. All you’ve got to do is go to that website to sign up, OregonVotes.gov/track. The voters who’ve already signed up for this service in Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Yamhill, and Marion County don’t need to do anything. They’ll still get those notifications, and we are obviously very excited to offer this additional layer of visibility and certainty to all Oregon voters.

Now, while you wait for your ballot to arrive, there’s something else important you can do to get ready to make your decisions. By now, everyone should have received their voter’s pamphlet in the mail. If you haven’t gotten it yet. You can find a copy of the statewide pamphlet and the links to the county pamphlets on our website.

Again, that’s OregonVotes.gov/VotersPamphlet, so please take the time to read it, review all the candidates and measures, talk things through with your friends, your family, your neighbors. The more you’re prepared before your ballot arrives, the easier it will be to sit down and make your choices. And while you’re reviewing your voter’s pamphlet, you should also make your plan about how you’re going to return your ballot.

• Will you use an official ballot drop box? It’s a great option.
• If you want to use the mail, will you put it in by Oct. 27? That’s the deadline we’re recommending.
• Or will you go directly to your county elections office?

Choose the option that works best for you. Know what your plan is, please, before Election Day gets close. That way when your ballot (which you will have been tracking, of course, with BallotTrax) gets to your house, you won’t be scrambling. You’ll be ready to make your choices and to return your ballot.

But of course, before you return it, make sure you sign your ballot envelope. Your vote won’t get counted without a valid signature, so don’t skip that step.

And don’t just leave your ballot sitting on your kitchen table. Return it as soon as you possibly can. I again, recommend using one of our official ballot drop boxes if you’re able. It is the most direct way to get your ballot in the hands of your local elections official.

You can also mail your ballot, of course, as we’ve said, but you’ll want to do that no later than Oct. 27. That Tuesday is a week before Election Day. That deadline, that recommendation is really important and I want to explain why.

Last August, we conducted an experiment with the assistance of our 36 county clerks and elections officials, with our mail system. In total, we tracked 108 pieces of mail, and here’s what we found:

On average, it took a piece of regular mail around a day to receive a postmark and around four days to be delivered. But even when we look at the outliers, it took some pieces of mail as long as four days to be postmarked and as long as 11 days to be delivered.

So what does all this mean for you as a voter? It means you can be confident your ballot will be postmarked and delivered on time if you mail it at least a week before Election Day.

If you can’t mail your ballot before Oct. 27, please use one of those official ballot drop boxes, or go into the post office and ask for a hand postmark right then and there.

What it all comes down to is this: The best way to know that your vote will be counted this year is to plan ahead. So:

• Check your registration.
• Sign up to track your ballot
• Know how you will return your ballot
• Give yourself enough time to do it.

Elections are decided by those who show up. Don’t let someone else show up for you. Your vote is your power. Use it.

Appreciate you all being here. I’m going to turn it over to Daniel Cortez, the American Postal Workers Union, and then we will be happy to take your questions. Daniel.

Daniel Cortez (American Postal Workers Union, president): Thank you. My name is Daniel Cortez with the American Postal Workers Union. I’m proud to serve as the president of the Oregon Postal Workers Union. I’m speaking on behalf of my members.

The (U.S.) Postal Service has been delivering mail for over 250 years. Barring the (U.S.) Army, it is the oldest federal institution in our country, predating the founding of our country by nearly a year. 

We’ve been delivering Americans’ ballots since the Civil War in Oregon. As you all know, my members have been processing and delivering Oregonians ballots for years.

My members know what they’re doing. They know how to move the ballots. They know how to keep them safe and secure because the sanctity of the mail is only second to moving the mail. They both must happen at the same time.

The United States mail is safe, it is secure, and it is sacred in the minds of every single one of my members.

While there may be concern of the administration at polling places (which is just unfathomable to think about), vote-by-mail is safe. The mail is safe. It takes a court order for anybody to open first-class mail. That’s just how it works. That’s how it’s set up. It’s part of why vote-by-mail has been so successful in Oregon and by extension the rest of the country.

First, I just want to say that all of the extra measures that are going into making sure that ballots and all official election mail moves timely and properly, that nothing is left behind in vehicles or on machines or in retail and delivery offices—unfortunately, that used to be a normal Tuesday. 

Erosions and attacks against the Postal Service over the years have, it’s no lie to say, that they have impacted the ability to move America’s mail as quickly as the workers would like.

But make no mistake, all official election mail, all ballots are going to be treated with utmost care and will get where they need to go when they need to get there.

That’s from ballot monitors in larger installations, making sure that nothing is sitting aside or left on a machine too long, reviewing all the incoming mail that the carriers bring back in the retail and delivery facilities. Double-checking vehicles to make sure nothing is left where it shouldn’t be.

As far as the postmark goes, unfortunately, earlier this year, they changed how the postmark works. It used to be a postmark meant when the postal service received that item. Now it’s when it goes across a machine, and as the secretary said, it could be a few days after being dropped off and placed in the mail.

For anyone that’s concerned, walk into your postal facility, walk up to the retail counter, and that clerk will what we call ‘round date,’ hand-cancel your item. So your ballot will actually receive a postmark live and in person the day that you are presenting it across the retail counter and the postal service is taking custody of it.

The attacks on vote by mail that we’re seeing both from our nation’s capital—and unfortunately here in Oregon—are terrible. 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 the mail that we have been entrusted to deliver.

It’s a sacred trust. My members take it very seriously. The extraordinary measures for election mail, like I said, for those of us, that’s just another day. But every Oregonian and every American can have confidence in not just my members, but by extension, I do believe all of the other postal unions, we have a job to do, is to deliver America’s mail, and we are happy to stand on the front lines to protect and preserve our democracy.

Presenter: Secretary of State Read was asked what voters should do if they see intimidation or suspicions activity at drop boxes. Tobias Read:

Tobias Read: They should call law enforcement. They should call their elections office. They should call us. I’ve heard from one elections director, he said he feels like he has a staff of thousands because anytime something odd does happen at a drop box, he gets a lot of calls.

That’s a good thing. We’d like to hear from that. Don’t intervene, but call.

Presenter: Daniel was asked where he would be on Election Day. From the American Postal Workers Union, Daniel Cortez:

Daniel Cortez: Hopefully everything is going swimmingly and I can just conduct normal business as usual, meeting with my members. I expect though that in the last several days leading up to the election, I’m going to be visiting a lot of the processing facilities.

One of the things that I didn’t mention: That the American Postal Workers Union at the national level and the United States Postal Service have done in the creation of the ballot monitor program, as I alluded to earlier, is we actually have a national hotline. 

It’s a direct—any of our members can use to reach out directly to our national leadership, and they will reach out directly to postal leadership in D.C. if there are any issues that are being reported. 

So, unfortunately, I imagine I’m going to be spending a lot of time, giving that phone number out to people and making sure that our members understand how they can, in those even final moments, report any issues and get them immediately rectified.

Presenter: Lane County voters will have four new dropbox options this election. In addition to those listed with your ballot, there are new dropboxes at three local fire district offices:

• River Road Water & Fire Protection District (105 Oakleigh Lane, Eugene)
• Mapleton Fire District (10940 OR-36, Mapleton)
• McKenzie Fire & Rescue (42870 McKenzie Highway in Leaburg)

The fourth is a smart ballot drop box inside the Lane County Public Service Building, 125 E. 8th Ave. in Eugene,
which can track where ballots are returned.

For more, see the Oregon secretary of state website. Here’s Robin Bloomgarden:

Robin Bloomgarden: Today is Oct. 13. It’s the deadline to register to vote or just to make sure your registration is correct—and fix it if it is not. Go to the secretary of state’s website and sign on there and check your registration or register if you haven’t already. Thank you.