By Kim Rosenberg
Once we get our ballots in the mail we have some time (10-14 days) to vote. This year it would be wise to do your research before you receive your ballot and be ready to get it back to the county sooner rather than later. My ballot usually hangs out at my house for a few days while I figure out how I’m voting but not this year. I plan to do my homework early. You can find information about ballot measures and candidates on the Secretary of State’s current election page. You can read the League of Women Voter’s pamphlet or VOTE 411. There are plenty of ways to get real information about candidates and ballot measures. Political ads aren’t going to give you more than a sound bite meant to scare you so do your homework and return your ballot. I’ve included a list of resources at the end of this post.
**EDITOR’S NOTE: The Tillamook County Pioneer will have our “Questions for the Canddiates” to give you an opportunity to “get to know” the candidates. Watch for the Questions series to begin after Oct. 1st.**
When you fill out your ballot be sure to completely fill in the oval by your choice. You don’t have to vote in all the contests. Whatever you do vote for will still count. And please, remember to sign the back of the envelope!
If your ballot is damaged when it arrives, you make a mistake, you spill something on it, your child draws on it or you just plain lose it, contact your county elections office for a replacement ballot.
One of the many things I love about vote by mail is that we don’t have to go somewhere on a Tuesday in November to vote. Do you remember the days before vote-by-mail? I do. You had to go to your specific polling place to cast your ballot. You had to wait in line until a booth was empty. You had to be quick about filling in your ballot because others might be waiting. And sometimes you might not even get to the polls in time to vote. If you were sick or didn’t have transportation or had to work a double, or your babysitter fell through, or any number of reasons that made it impossible for you to get to your polling place and vote. Vote by mail means that more people can vote regardless of any limiting circumstances that may befall them on Election Day and more voting means more people having a voice.
While you can mail back your ballot, because of the uncertainty about how the USPS will process mail-in ballots, Secretary of State, Tobias Read, is encouraging all Oregonians to drop their ballots in one of the collection boxes that are located all over our state. If you’re registered in one county you can drop your ballot off in another and it will still make its way back to the county where you are registered. These boxes are built to be secure and have all kinds of bells and whistles to keep our ballots safe.
The locked ballot containers in the collection boxes are regularly picked up by sworn election officials. Once the ballots make it to the county Elections Division, signatures are verified using a ballot envelope scanner. Trained election staff verify the signatures by comparing it to the signature on file in the registration database. If the signature matches, it goes on to the next step, but if the signature doesn’t match, a letter is sent to the voter letting them know. The voter is required to respond within 21 days after the election or the ballot is rejected.
In the next post we’ll follow our ballots on to the deconstruction step and find out how votes are tallied.
The information in today’s post came from the Tillamook County Clerk’s office, Oregon Secretary of State’s Elections Division, a September 3, 2026, report on OPB’s website by Dirk VanderHart, and a May 17, 2026 KATU report on ballot security.
Resources for more information:
League of Women Voters https://www.lwv.org/elections
VOTE 411 https://www.lwv.org/elections/vote411
LWV Voter’s Guide https://www.lwvor.org/vote (this link has both English and Spanish voting guides available as a pdf)
Tillamook County Clerk https://www.tillamookcounty.gov/clerk/page/elections-division
Oregon Secretary of State Elections Division https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/pages/default.aspx
If this information has been helpful to you, please repost anywhere in Oregon! Let’s get out the vote!
*Part 1 – https://www.tillamookcountypioneer.net/the-vote-and-ivory-soap-99-44-100-pure/
