Another Oregon Election . . . Find the Postage Stamps!

My (non-absentee) ballot for November’s election arrived in the mail last week. What is an unremarkable comment for an Oregonian remains unusual nearly anywhere else in the U.S.

My home state can claim a lot of political and legislative firsts: the first to enact comprehensive land-use programs between 1969 and 1973; the first to pass a bottle bill, in 1971; the first to vote for physician assistance in dying, in 1994; and the first to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana in 1973, and to approve its medical use in 1998.

Also in 1998, Oregon was the first state to institute vote-by-mail, through an initiative petition and a popular vote that scored more than 2 to 1. Statewide elections by mail began in 2000. In the ensuing decade and a half, however, few other states have followed our example.

Washington began to practice vote-by-mail in various counties over the past 20 years, but only made it a statewide practice in 2011. Colorado began holding elections by mail in 2013. Perhaps it’s not quite a coincidence that those were the first two states to vote to legalize recreational use of marijuana as well, in 2012.

At the same time as it cut the cost of elections by several million dollars each year, vote-by-mail increased turnout in Oregon for more than a decade. Turnout in the 2000 primary was 51 percent, and 79 percent in the November general election. Those figures were 46 and 86 percent, respectively, in 2004; and 58.3 and 85.7 percent in the first Obama election, in 2008.

Most general elections in the 30 years prior to 2000 saw turnouts in the 63 to 78 percent range. Only in 1988 and 1992 did more than 80 percent of registered Oregon voters exercise their right to vote, and they barely cleared 80 percent in 1988.

A 2012 article in the Christian Science Monitor noted that voter turnout in Oregon is consistently higher than the national average -- about 60.13 percent if you combine primary and general elections, as opposed to barely above 50 percent nationally.

Only five states have a higher average turnout: South Dakota, Alaska, Wisconsin, Maine, and Minnesota. The differences are not massive: the next four are within two percentage points above Oregon, and only number-one Minnesota jumps all the way to 67.6 percent (and roughly 76 percent in general elections).

The lowest voter turnouts in 2012 were in Hawaii, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. They also featured among the lowest turnouts in 2008, which one might attribute to the (anti-)Obama Effect, except that low voter turnout also tends to correlate with high poverty rates. And vote-by-mail isn’t the only innovative option: citizens of France, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Mexico, and Australia have been voting online, and Canada will soon join them.

To be honest, I miss election days at the polls. I voted on my college campus, at a school in the North End of Boston, at the public library in Roseburg, Douglas County, and finally at First Emanuel Lutheran Church in Northwest Portland. Many of us lined up first thing in the morning to discharge our civic duty before going to work. I overheard spirited but good-natured political debates by voters at the polls in Boston.

There was a wonderful we’re-all-in-this-together feeling about turning out to vote at a public place, check off your name on the voting rolls, and mark your choices on a ballot in the “public privacy” of a booth. I miss that. Dropping a fat envelope in a mailbox (or, more often, in the slot of a bin at the central library or Pioneer Courthouse Square) just isn’t the same.

On the other hand, I’m all for anything that gets more people to vote. But the numbers may be falling here again. The 2012 primary attracted a little less than 39 percent of all registered Oregon voters, though turnout for the general was still a highly respectable 82.8 percent.

Mid-term elections almost always see a lower turnout. Only 35.9 percent of us returned our filled-in ballots for the May 20 primary earlier this year. Voter discontent with government in general and our selection of candidates is unfortunately climbing, as a Portland Tribune story noted last week.

Governor John Kitzhaber is running for a fourth term, though not consecutive. He served from 1993 to 2003, then stepped down in observance of term limits set by the Oregon Constitution. He ran again successfully in 2010 after another Democrat, Ted Kulongoski, served two terms. So this would be his second “second” term.

Despite facing a few troubling issues, such as big problems with the state health insurance registry last year, and the failure of a bridge expansion project across the Columbia River, Kitzhaber seemed an easy winner.

But less than two weeks ago, his “first lady” Cylvia Hayes (actually, a ten-year-long girlfriend to whom he only proposed this summer) was revealed to have accepted $5,000 for a “green-card marriage” to an Ethiopian immigrant in 1997. That same year, she helped another man buy 60 acres in Washington where he intended to grow marijuana.

Less exciting perhaps, but much more recent and questionable as far as the governor’s ethics are concerned, is the possibility that Hayes has done private consulting jobs and accepted contracts with nonprofits while working out of the governor’s office.

These developments have disgusted both his supporters and the general electorate. But Kitzhaber will probably win his fourth term, if for no other reason than his Republican opponent, state representative Dennis Richardson, has voiced many notions that are simply unacceptable to Democratic and Independent Oregon voters. In the past, Richardson has spoken in favor of arming schoolteachers, opposing abortion rights, and sending repeat illegal alien immigrants to prison in China.

Turnout might remain high due to this year’s ballot measures, however. Among the hot issues we’ll be voting on in Oregon are legalization of marijuana; driving permits for illegal immigrants; another round of the equal-rights amendment; a modified open primary, in which voters may cross party lines and the top two vote-getters advance to the general election; and required labeling of genetically modified foods. It looks as if same-sex marriage will be settled in the courts.

The television ads have heated up in recent weeks, and I’ll probably write about some of these issues here.