Tobias Read, Ron Wyden take questions about the election, urge vigilance

Presenter: With Election Day less than a week away, Oregon’s secretary of state participated in a virtual town hall.  If you are going to mail your ballot,  he says you should ask for a hand-stamped postmark. Tobias Reed:

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): Go into the post office, and ask someone there to get that hand postmark applied so you can be sure that it doesn’t get rejected for the late postmark.

Presenter: U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden also appeared at the virtual town hall Oct. 27. Tobias Reed:

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): This is the last of the seven town halls that our team has put together across Oregon ahead of our November general election.

We put these together because we know there are a lot of questions about elections right now, and it is not enough to simply say that ‘we have safe, accurate, and fair elections.’

You can absolutely trust that that statement is true, but I know that trust is not something that’s given, it’s earned. So we have to show up. We have to be transparent.

We have to be accountable to you, the people of Oregon, because ultimately this is a whole lot bigger than just one person in one office or one election. This is about our democracy.

It’s about our right as Americans to decide who leads us—what our shared future is going to look like through free and fair elections. It is the right that our country was founded on 250 years ago, and we have to do everything in our power to protect it.

Unfortunately, the job of protecting our elections is harder right now than it’s ever been because we’re dealing with service changes at the postal service, loud and dangerous misinformation about elections online, threats to the physical safety of election workers and executive orders that would make it harder for people to vote while undermining the integrity of our elections.

That’s a long list, and it feels like it is growing every single day.

But even with all of that I feel really good about our elections we’ve got a gold standard system of vote by mail elections that makes us resilient to a lot of the big threats that other states are worried about right now. We’ve got 36 incredible county clerks and elections directors, all of whom are dedicated to following the law and upholding the right of every eligible Oregonian to vote.

We’ve got Sen. Wyden and the rest of our Oregon congressional delegation that are ready to fight back if Congress tries to strip away your right to vote. And we’ve got all of you, all the people on this call who are ready to listen, to jump in and share these trusted messages, these truthful messages with members of your community.

So if you hear one thing from me tonight, please make it this: We will have free and fair elections in November. And in Oregon we expect everyone, especially politicians and those in power, to respect those results.

With that, thanks for being here. Senator Wyden, over to you.

Ron Wyden (U.S. senator, Oregon): Thank you and it’s wonderful to be with you. I’ve had more than 1,100 open-to-all town hall meetings. And this is essentially part of those kinds of approaches because I will tell you, I think the best antidote to the poison of misinformation is that we’re here together and if we hear something that just isn’t right, we can all work together and make sure that the truth that gets out.

And vote by mail has proven for more than three decades to be a reliable, safe, and convenient way for Oregonians to make their election choices.

Oregon has deep roots in vote by mail. That is bipartisan. Let me say that again. Bipartisan blue and red were involved in the founding of vote by mail.

Now I am the first United States senator in Oregon and in America to be elected completely by mail. I’m sure you picked up that I’m a Democrat. The second senator is Gordon Smith, Republican of Pendleton, someone who’s been a good friend of mine and both of us—one D, one R—have been involved in these issues and as has been,, Dennis Richardson, who was one of our state officials who used to kid me, he’d say something like, ‘Ron, I’m more conservative than you can imagine.’ And then I’d say, ‘And you told Donald Trump that he was off base in trying to gut vote by mail.’

So if you remember one thing tonight, I hope you’ll remember the power of vote by mail to deal with folks fairly who live in rural areas and understand that we have been working, working, and working for all these years since I was the first to be bipartisan in order to say:

‘Look, this is a challenging and polarizing political time in America. We’re going to do our best to chip away at some of that polarization. ’cause we’re going to say this was not about partisanship from the very first day, day one, it was bipartisan and it’s always going to be that way.’

Presenter: The event moderator was Eastern Oregon University president, Dr. Kelly Ryan.

Dr. Kelly Ryan (Eastern Oregon University, president): An individual wrote, I’ve had people come to my door asking for my ballot, saying they’re with a campaign, but they have zero identification. Why should I give them my ballot?

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): The short answer is you shouldn’t, if you don’t trust them, , don’t give the your ballot. , We’ve worked really hard to make it convenient for people to get their ballots back. Uh, we’ve added a number of drop boxes now we’re nearing 340 of them around the state.

So if that is an option for you, that’s the best way to do it. Particularly now that we’re just, a week away from election day. , We want to make sure , that people have, the opportunity to get them there. If you need to use the mail, go in and ask someone there to put a hand postmark on it so you won’t risk losing your ballot to a late postmark. So, don’t keep your ballot to someone you don’t trust. Get it to a Dropbox or get it in the mail with a hand postmark now .

Dr. Kelly Ryan (Eastern Oregon University, president): , Describe how protections are in place to prevent ballots from being submitted by people who are not citizens or are made up names, et cetera. And another way of asking this was,

why isn’t Oregon purging voting rolls of incorrect ballots? Deceased, undocumented voters who’ve moved, duplicate ballots, ballots for dogs? There’s no accountability.

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): There’s a lot in that question. The process is worth talking through a little bit. So when someone registers to vote, they have to prove their identity, they have to prove their eligibility, and then you can think about all the steps that go through that. A paper ballot goes out to those folks. It’s not going to be counted unless it’s returned with a signature on the envelope that matches the signature on file.

So we’re very confident that only the people who are supposed to be voting are voting. In addition to that, our county clerks across the state are doing work every day to make sure that our voter rolls are up to date. They’re using information from all kinds of different sources from the Oregon Health Authority, from coroners, from the Social Security death notices, , so that we’re removing people.

It’s also important for people who have moved. I talked to someone today who has moved outta state and he did a very responsible thing and reached back out to his county clerk in Oregon to let him know that he has moved. So they know to remove, but we don’t want other people removing, or alleging that someone should be removed from the voting rolls.

Voter fraud is vanishingly rare. Study after study confirms that one in particular in Oregon, looked at almost 61 million ballots over 19 years, found 38 cases of improper voting. We want that to be zero, and we’re continually working on that, but it is vanishingly rare. It has never affected the outcome of an Oregon election.

Dr. Kelly Ryan (Eastern Oregon University, president): If we choose to put our ballots into a box rather than into the mail, how protected are they from vandalism or illegal confiscation or theft?

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): Best thing is to do that early, , so that you know that your ballot is in the hands of the elections office. , A ballot Dropbox means is going directly there and you don’t have to rely on, uh, unpredictability of the post office.

Again, sign up for ballot tracks now available across the state, Oregon votes.gov/track, and you’ll get a text message or a phone call or an email or all three. When those three key steps happen, when it gets mailed to you, when it gets received, and when it gets accepted for counting.

In addition to that, the county clerks and elections directors across the state are all doing a great job making sure that those ballot boxes are secure.

We’ve all got a role in helping keep those ballot boxes safe.

Dr. Kelly Ryan (Eastern Oregon University, president): Given USPS is being pressured by the federal administration, do we encourage voters to drop off their ballots? What’s been done or will be done to protect drop off locations?

Ron Wyden (U.S. senator, Oregon): First of all, we fought back successfully against this Trump scheme to bring in the postal service. That is the bottom line. We pushed very, very hard and the delegation’s been very vocal about the president’s actions to undermine the postal service.

So I’m glad that the court last month halted this Trump scheme, but we have to be vigilant. What any individual voter can do to ensure their vote is counted is use one of those drop boxes.

And the reality is , we’ve gotta keep vigilant, even though we have a fabulous system, we really don’t know what some people may try to do. I believe that our system is very, very protective of our rights, and particularly in areas like we’re talking about, but we’re going to be very vigilant nonetheless.

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): And the thing for me is that, it’s a postal service. It’s not a postal business. This is not something that the president gets to try to squeeze more billions out of. It’s central to our democracy. And so we will continue to hold them accountable.

The senator is right. , We were, one of 20 plus states that sued and got the Supreme Court ruling that said, you can’t use that executive order right now.

The Constitution’s really clear. Article one, section four says that states run elections. Presidents do not. So we’re going to continue to do that.

One last note is that we have to be ready for any kind of disruption, not just ones that are manufactured by the president. It wasn’t so many years ago that we were conducting an election in the midst of wildfires that had clerks having to figure out how to get ballots to people who no longer had homes.

So we’ve got tools, we’ve got some muscle memory. We’ve got the discipline. We will make sure that people get ballots. Our job is to protect that. Your job is to vote and get your ballot back please.

Dr. Kelly Ryan (Eastern Oregon University, president): What actions should voters take if they encounter federal or self-appointed election observers at poll locations? Will all local police agencies sworn to protect and serve, operate in a non-partisan manner to keep the peace?

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): I feel really confident about where we are. ’cause it is against federal law to interfere with someone who is voting. It’s against the law to intimidate or coerce them. If you see something like that where someone is trying to intimidate, if you feel intimidated or harassed, call law enforcement. Call us. Call your elections office.

We will use every legal tool at our disposal, to protect you.

Dr. Kelly Ryan (Eastern Oregon University, president): What will happen if there are ballot seizures?

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): Well, look, we have county clerks all across the the state who know exactly what to do. We have been drilling this, we’ve been doing the tabletop exercises, all the scenario planning. I’m very confident that we will be ready for whatever challenge comes in front of us.

But, it would be foolish, I think, at this point to speculate on exactly what this administration and what this president might be prepared to do, because I think he’s fearful, as a result of knowing he’s not likely to do well in a free and fair election, given the unpopularity of his positions and policies at this point.

Ron Wyden (U.S. senator, Oregon): I think that Tobias is absolutely right in terms of talking about our confidence. But I’m always going to watch Donald Trump. So let’s be vigilant…

I come back to the fact that as a result of what we’ve been talking about tonight, we are empowering people all over rural Oregon. Most of our state is rural.

You know, we talk about the valley and where the votes are and the rest. But the last time I looked, I got an election certificate to represent every nook and cranny in our state. And basically, vote-by-mail, allows me to do that. And I’m honored to work with you and Secretary Read because this is making democracy even stronger.

Tobias Read (Oregon, secretary of state): I want to remind everybody here that we all share an important title, which is ‘Citizen.’

And we all have maybe the most important job in our democracy, which is to vote. We’ve got just one week left in this election, we’ve got already 26% of eligible ballots have been cast in return.

As of this afternoon, we are at 25.88% of people who have returned their ballots: 350,508 ballots returned from Democrats, from Republicans there are 247,436 ballots returned.

And I want to see that number continue to rocket up even in the next couple of days. So everyone who hasn’t voted, please don’t wait.

And as I mentioned before, if you’d still need to use the mail, go into the post office, get that hand postmark applied so you can be sure that it doesn’t get rejected for the late postmark.

You can track all that progress: OregonVotes.gov/track.

And remember, as we have said repeatedly tonight, voting is how we decide the direction of the state and the future. It’s how we hold politicians and government accountable and make sure the power continues to answer to us, to the people —not the other way around. It is your power, so use it.

Presenter: That is Tobias Reed, Oregon’s secretary of state, speaking at a virtual town hall Tuesday evening.