Union County voters urged to return ballots before Tuesday deadline

Ballots need to be back by 8 p.m. Tuesday

Union County voters who still have a ballot in hand have one deadline that matters most: 8 p.m. Tuesday. That is the cutoff for ballots to be received by county elections offices, and it is also when unofficial results begin posting and then update repeatedly through the evening.

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read has been pressing voters to use an official ballot drop box in the final week instead of relying on the mail. The warning is simple: the closer Election Day gets, the more risk there is in assuming the postal system will move fast enough.

Where Union County ballots must go

The Union County Clerk and Recorder’s Office says it is responsible for conducting county elections, and its election pages list the places voters need to look for help: ballot drop sites, ballot postmark information, public test notices and unofficial summary results. For anyone still holding a ballot, the safest move is to return it through an official ballot drop box or take it directly to the county elections office.

That matters because Oregon’s rule is strict. A ballot counts if it is received by the county elections office by 8 p.m. Election Day. A mailed ballot can also count if it is postmarked by 8 p.m. that night. If you are mailing late, the real issue is whether the postmark will meet the deadline, not whether the envelope was dropped in a mailbox sometime that day.

Secretary of State guidance says the final week is the point to stop trusting regular mail and use a drop box instead. That is the clearest path for voters who do not want a timing problem to erase their vote.

How Union County keeps ballots secure

Lisa Feik, Union County clerk, described a process built around chain of custody and repeated checks. Ballots arrive by mail or are collected from drop boxes on scheduled runs by law enforcement. The boxes are designed so the sheriff’s office can remove the ballot container without having access to the ballots themselves.

Once the ballot materials get to the clerk’s office, staff open them, count them and verify signatures. The ballots are then separated into precincts and reviewed again by the election board before totals move forward. Feik said the county’s election board has 16 members from different political parties, working in tables of four so each voter’s intent is checked more than once.

There is also a county-specific safeguard when the sheriff is a candidate. In that situation, the clerk’s office may handle some ballot box pickups instead of the sheriff’s office. The point, as Read and Feik both emphasized in explaining the system, is to keep multiple people and multiple steps between the ballot and the final tally.

What is at stake in Union County

This is not just a procedural deadline. Union County’s May primary includes local races for county commissioner, district attorney and justice of the peace, along with a statewide transportation measure and a local noxious-weeds levy. Those are the decisions that will shape county government, courtroom leadership, road funding and weed-control work across the area.

The county’s unofficial results page listed 19,644 eligible voters. In the latest update, Union County reported 5,203 ballots counted and 62% turnout. That is a strong showing, but it also means thousands of voters were still deciding whether to make their ballot count in the final stretch.

Read said early ballot-return data was tracking ahead of both the 2022 and 2024 primary elections, another sign that voters were already moving before the deadline. In a place like Union County, where turnout can swing sharply depending on how quickly ballots are returned, the final day still carries real weight.

The mistakes that can cost a vote

The biggest risk for last-minute voters is not complicated. It is delay. A ballot that sits on the kitchen table until after the deadline, or one that is dropped in the mail too late to be postmarked by 8 p.m., can fall outside the rules. The county and state guidance point to the same fix: use an official drop box if you are anywhere near the cutoff.

A few practical steps can keep a ballot in the count:

• Return it to an official ballot drop box or the county elections office.

• Do not assume a late mailing will be counted unless it meets the 8 p.m. postmark rule.

• Check Union County’s ballot postmark information before deciding to mail.

• Use the county’s ballot drop site list rather than a regular mailbox if the deadline is close.

• Make sure the ballot gets to the right place by 8 p.m. Tuesday, not later in the evening.

Oregon’s unofficial results begin posting right after the deadline and update about every 15 minutes, so voters who do return ballots on time will start seeing numbers quickly. For Union County, the last hours are about mechanics, not campaign noise: get the ballot to the right place on time, and it stays in the count. Miss the deadline, and the vote disappears before the tally even begins.