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Raw Story: GOP senator's effort to end decades-old voting law slammed by thousands in Oregon
Raw Story - GOP senator’s effort to end decades-old voting law slammed by thousands in Oregon
Julia Shumway, Oregon Capital Chronicle
April 1, 2025 7:28AM ET
Thousands of Oregonians submitted letters opposing a Republican senator’s long-shot attempt to ask voters whether to repeal the state’s decades-old mail voting law, swamping the Legislature’s website on Monday.
The outcry against Sen. David Brock Smith’s Senate Bill 210 could serve as a preview of what’s to come if his proposal or a separate initiative led by one of Brock Smith’s Republican rivals makes it to the 2026 ballot. Oregonians have voted entirely by mail since 2000, after nearly 70% of voters approved switching to mail ballots in 1998.
A quarter-century later, and after Republican party leaders including President Donald Trump spent years spreading debunked claims of voter fraud, Brock Smith argued that Oregon voters should get to decide again.
“I think it’s time, which is why this is a referral for Oregonians to either reaffirm or deny vote by mail in this state,” the Port Orford Republican said during a Monday hearing of the Senate Rules Committee.
The bill, which is unlikely to advance in the Democratic-controlled Senate, would ask voters to approve switching from mail voting to in-person voting on Election Day beginning in 2028. It also would repeal multiple recent laws aimed at making voting easier, including laws that added prepaid ballot-return envelopes and allowed the counting of ballots mailed and postmarked by Election Day that arrive at clerks’ offices up to a week later.
/snip
Julia Shumway, Oregon Capital Chronicle
April 1, 2025 7:28AM ET
Thousands of Oregonians submitted letters opposing a Republican senator’s long-shot attempt to ask voters whether to repeal the state’s decades-old mail voting law, swamping the Legislature’s website on Monday.
The outcry against Sen. David Brock Smith’s Senate Bill 210 could serve as a preview of what’s to come if his proposal or a separate initiative led by one of Brock Smith’s Republican rivals makes it to the 2026 ballot. Oregonians have voted entirely by mail since 2000, after nearly 70% of voters approved switching to mail ballots in 1998.
A quarter-century later, and after Republican party leaders including President Donald Trump spent years spreading debunked claims of voter fraud, Brock Smith argued that Oregon voters should get to decide again.
“I think it’s time, which is why this is a referral for Oregonians to either reaffirm or deny vote by mail in this state,” the Port Orford Republican said during a Monday hearing of the Senate Rules Committee.
The bill, which is unlikely to advance in the Democratic-controlled Senate, would ask voters to approve switching from mail voting to in-person voting on Election Day beginning in 2028. It also would repeal multiple recent laws aimed at making voting easier, including laws that added prepaid ballot-return envelopes and allowed the counting of ballots mailed and postmarked by Election Day that arrive at clerks’ offices up to a week later.
/snip