A couple of weeks ago, I got an email.

“Hello,

Your ballot for the August 2020 Special Election has been sent. Look for it soon in your mailbox! If you have any questions, call us at 503-988-VOTE (503-988-8683).”

I’d forgotten there was a special election for a City Council vacancy, so it was a little surprising. But there it was, a note from my elections office. The next day, sure enough, there was a ballot in my mailbox.

I moved from Nevada to Oregon 13 years ago, and vote-by-mail took some getting used to. I actually enjoyed going to the Meadows Mall for early voting, pushing the buttons, getting the “I Voted” sticker. Voting by mail, frankly, felt like it was cheapening the democratic process.

This is how I learned to stop worrying and love vote-by-mail:

First, the process gives you time. Every voter knows there are races you don’t know about, races you don’t care about and races you don’t want to think about because your mind is made. The latter are easiest to fill in. With apologies to Jon Ralston’s hatred of early voting, you can fill those bubbles on the day you get your ballot.

But what about the rest?

In Oregon, ballots come shortly after the voters pamphlet arrives. The pamphlet, often a magazine-length booklet, includes campaign-approved messaging and a short bio of candidates, plus a list of endorsers. It also contains information and arguments in favor, and opposed to, ballot measures like tax increases or changes in state law. 

Simply put, it gives voters the opportunity to chew on their thoughts for those races they don’t know about.

What about the races you don’t care about? For me, that’s easy: I pull up the endorsements from newspapers, with my ballot in front of me, and decide whether to give my vote to the various judges and special district candidates that I’ve never heard of. Newspapers in Oregon will often post their full endorsement videos, if you want to catch a glimpse of a candidate’s demeanor and how they interact with others.

Finally, you have the option of leaving races blank. Voters rarely do this on property tax measures, but for races like judgeships or soil conservation districts, voters will leave races blank. 

Still, turnout for even the least-popular elections far outpaces historic municipal turnout in Nevada. In Portland, a city of 700,000 people, getting 25,000 votes in a city-wide race is an embarrassment. In Las Vegas, a city of 650,000 people, getting 25,000 votes is enough to make you mayor.

Back to our current election: the City Council vacancy. As I write this, five days before ballots are due, more than 112,000 Portlanders have voted – about a quarter of the electorate.

I knew who I was voting for and turned my ballot in early. My ballot went into a “secrecy envelope” – a flap that covers the markings, so that election workers who open the mailing envelopes can’t see who I, individually, voted for. Then it went into the mailing envelope, with postage paid.

On the back of the mailing envelope is a bar code that is scanned by election officials, and a signature line for me. My signature is matched by election workers to my voter registration, and then my ballot is sent for counting.

If I had chosen not to mail my ballot, I could have taken it to any of the dozens of election drop sites around Multnomah County, where ballots are collected daily for tabulation. This is key, especially as doubts rise about the political neutrality of U.S. Postal Service leadership. Offering voters safe places to drop off their ballots is going to be crucial in this 2020 election cycle.

Nevada should be sure to have numerous, safe and easily accessible ballot collection boxes by November.

On July 27, I got another email. “Your August 11 2020 Special Election ballot has been received. As soon as your ballot has been processed, you will receive a status update.”

Two days later, “Your ballot for the August 2020 Special Election has been accepted and will be counted. Get your special Oregon ‘I Voted’ virtual sticker here.” 

The virtual sticker isn’t as good as the real thing. On the other hand, it’s not like I’m working in an office any time soon, or going to the store very often, so it’s not like I have anyone to brag to.

Nick Christensen is a Las Vegas native and the former editor of the Summerlin News. He is now the communications advisor for the Metro Council in Portland. He is on Twitter at @nickcpdx and can be reached via email at [email protected].