Oregon officials urge voters to cast ballots in the May 19 primary, defending vote by mail and reassuring voters about election integrity.
OREGON, USA — The primary election is 10 days away, and Oregon officials are encouraging people to get out and vote.
Sen. Ron Wyden and Secretary of State Tobias Read, both critical of President Donald Trump’s executive order on voting, are reassuring people that they can still vote by mail.
KGW stopped by the Sellwood-Moreland Library today, where Wyden was dropping off his own ballot and spoke about election integrity.
“This is safe,” Wyden said. “We have a backup in terms of the signatures and people find it convenient. It’s an awful lot better way to go than to have people waiting hours and hours on a workday just to be part of democracy.”
Wyden praised mail-in voting and early voting after Trump signed an executive order restricting vote-by-mail elections.
“Remember, it’s about voter integrity. We want to have honest voting in our country. If you don’t have honest voting, you can’t have really a nation,” Trump said.
The order calls for Homeland Security to create a list of U.S. citizens in each state who are eligible to vote. It also aims to ban the U.S. Postal Service from sending ballots to people that don’t fall on each state’s approved list.
“What is Donald Trump so frightened about when we vote by mail? After all, he does it when it’s convenient for him,” Wyden said, referring to when Trump recently voted by mail in the Florida special election in March.
“This is just about politics,” Read added. “It’s not about election security; it’s not about anything but a president who knows that he is unpopular and is looking for every way possible to avoid that accountability that is represented by elections.”
Read spoke on “Straight Talk” this week about vote-by-mail, warning voters not to wait too long to return ballots by mail due to postal processing changes and also recommending using official county drop boxes.
“Fundamentally, my responsibility is to make sure Oregonians who are eligible get to cast their vote and be confident that it is counted accurately,” Read said.
The primary election is May 19.
