Begin­ning next year, vot­ers in the Beaver State who wish to use the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice to return their bal­lots will no longer have to wor­ry about ensur­ing that their bal­lot reach­es elec­tion offi­cials by the dead­line to return bal­lots. That’s because Ore­gon Gov­er­nor Kate Brown just signed into law House Bill 3291, autho­riz­ing elect­ed offi­cials to accept bal­lots that are post­marked by Elec­tion Day.

Vot­ers to the north, in Wash­ing­ton State, have long enjoyed the free­dom to vote late and still use the Postal Ser­vice to return their bal­lot, because bal­lots that arrive after Elec­tion Day are still legal­ly cast votes under Wash­ing­ton State law. To count, they just need to be post­marked no lat­er than the last day of the three week vot­ing win­dow and received before the elec­tion is certified.

More than a dozen oth­er states around the coun­try have embraced Wash­ing­ton’s vot­er-friend­ly approach for accep­tance of bal­lots that were vot­ed at home.

Ore­gon, on the oth­er hand, has long required bal­lots to be in elect­ed offi­cials’ cus­tody by the time that vot­ing ends. Now, Ore­gon is chang­ing course and fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton’s lead. That’s a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment for our region!

As the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Ore­gon (DPO) said in an email to its sup­port­ers today: “This is great news for increas­ing vot­er access and participation!”

“It also means no more con­fu­sion about when you can put your bal­lot into a mail­box in time for it to arrive at an elec­tions office by Elec­tion Day. Now, so long as you drop your bal­lot in your mail­box by Elec­tion Day and it is received no lat­er than sev­en days after an elec­tion, it will be accepted.”

Hur­rah!

Many years ago, Sam Reed and The Seat­tle Times pro­posed doing away with Wash­ing­ton’s vot­er-friend­ly bal­lot return pol­i­cy and adopt­ing Ore­gon’s pol­i­cy. Thank­ful­ly, the Leg­is­la­ture did­n’t lis­ten to them. And now, the oppo­site has hap­pened: Ore­gon leg­is­la­tors have come to their sens­es and made return­ing a bal­lot eas­i­er. This is a love­ly win for democ­ra­cy and bal­lot access.

Repub­li­cans opposed the bill when it came up for a floor vote in the Ore­gon Leg­is­la­ture, base­less­ly argu­ing that it would make fraud eas­i­er.

It won’t, of course, and it’s rare that any­one tries to vote fraud­u­lent­ly. There are almost no known instances of vot­ing fraud any­where in this country.

The cas­es we do know of have gen­er­al­ly involved peo­ple aligned with Repub­li­can can­di­dates and caus­es who are des­per­ate to win at any cost.

Per­haps that’s why some Repub­li­cans think about “vot­er fraud” so much — because they assume their oppo­nents are just as will­ing to cheat as they are.

One Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor also expressed con­cerns, say­ing: “I reluc­tant­ly vot­ed for this today… My con­cern is, in close races … that delay­ing the returns for a week or two after­ward will under­mine faith in the sys­tem. I hope I’m wrong.”

That sen­a­tor was Lee Bey­er, D‑Springfield.

You don’t have to wor­ry, Sen­a­tor Bey­er. Returns in Ore­gon will not be delayed as a result of this new law. Some bal­lots might be count­ed lat­er on in the process than they would have before, but that won’t delay the work of count­ing bal­lots. More impor­tant­ly, oth­er bal­lots that would have been void­ed mere­ly because they did­n’t get deliv­ered back to offi­cials by Elec­tion Day will now be counted!

Wash­ing­ton State has accept­ed bal­lots post­marked through Elec­tion Day for years, and we usu­al­ly have a pret­ty good idea of who won on Elec­tion Night.

Even when we don’t, due to close mar­gins, it rarely takes longer than a few days to be able to project with con­fi­dence who will win in a giv­en race.

The excep­tions would be super tight races in which only a hand­ful of votes sep­a­rate the can­di­dates. But super tight races don’t ben­e­fit from the sys­tem Ore­gon just aban­doned because the result can’t be known until the bal­lots are recount­ed. And a prop­er recount can only begin when the ini­tial count is done.

It also isn’t nec­es­sary to require bal­lots to be in elect­ed offi­cials’ cus­tody by Elec­tion Day in order to count them quick­ly. The speed at which bal­lots are count­ed is dri­ven by logis­ti­cal con­straints and elec­tions offi­cials’ resource avail­abil­i­ty, not hoops placed in front of vot­ers. Again, what’s impor­tant is doing every­thing pos­si­ble to ensure that every vote is count­ed. The more bar­ri­ers we can elim­i­nate to vot­ing, the health­i­er our democ­ra­cy will be.