A lead supporter for the push to end vote by mail in Oregon claims it’s gaining steam, but opponents say it has a long way to go.

Initiative 37 has gathered at least 25,000 signatures since July 25, says chief petitioner Ben Edtl, a Republican political consultant from Tualatin.

“We’ve been at almost every county fair in the state this summer,” said Edtl, who recently contested his own election loss before resigning as a public transportation boss in Douglas County. (The results of that election are still being contested and a trial is scheduled in October.)

The initiative needs more than 156,000 verified signatures by July 2 to qualify for November 2026, according to the Oregon Secretary of State. Supporters have so far raised nearly $9,000 but spent nearly $12,000.

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The state has verified 1,280 signatures and approved its circulation by volunteers, according to a state spokesperson. Backers do not have to submit signatures until they use paid canvassers, and the state will not verify them “until at least 100% of the required total number of signatures is submitted for verification.”

Oregon began testing a vote-by mail system in the 1980s before becoming the first state in the country to formally adopt the system. Since then, seven states and Washington D.C. have followed suit.

Edtl is among the members of Oregon’s Republican party who criticize its election system, claiming it’s marked by fraud. He says many Oregon voters want greater transparency and security in their elections.

“If half of the citizens in a state don’t believe their elections are legit, then you’ve got a problem,” said Edtl, who could not clarify where that number comes from, but later added: “I am referring to the general split between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of election integrity.”

“Every single Oregonian needs to know how our votes are counted,” he said. “And we don’t know.”

State elections leaders say allegations that mail-in voting leads to corrupted elections are false, and that the system has a long history of secure elections with no evidence of widespread fraud.

A review of Oregon’s vote-by-mail system, conducted by the state’s Legislative Fiscal Office, found 38 criminal convictions of voter fraud out of the 61 million ballots cast from 2000 through 2019. “That amounts to a rate of .00006%,” the review said.

“No election has been even seriously in danger, much less changed because of it,” said Phil Keisling, who was Oregon’s Secretary of State in the 1990s, when Oregon started using the system in its elections. “It’s proven. It’s safe. It’s secure. And Oregonians understand that it helps them make them more informed choices about what’s on their ballot.”

Trump continues threats

The initiative comes as President Donald Trump said last week that he wants to end mail-in voting. The president indicated he wants to get rid of voting machines and prefers watermarked paper ballots. He pledged to sign an executive order on the matter before the midterm elections.

“There’s a ton of momentum,” said Edtl. “We don’t want to get ahead of the president but Oregon is where it all started, and we hope that Oregon is where it all ends in 2026.”

Tobias Read, the Democrat who was elected Secretary of State last November, said in response to Trump’s comments that, barring an act of Congress, the federal government does not have the authority to end mail-in voting.

Read last week pushed back on Trump’s statements on mail-in voting, saying the system is “secure and accurate” and that the president is “actively working to corrupt our elections.” A spokesperson for Read’s office said this week that it cannot comment on local ballot initiatives.

The measure would require that all elections held within Oregon occur on a single day called “Election Day.”

“The general biennial election shall be a state holiday,” the initiative says.

Except for “verified absentee voters,” people would need to register before Election Day by providing proof of citizenship and “other qualifications.” Voters would fill out paper ballots that would be hand-counted and maintained by county officials.

The petition sparked pushback from vote-by-mail supporters who say it’s a secure system that improves voter turnout by helping people turn in ballots while balancing their daily lives. The state has historically reported a higher turnout than most states, and about 75% of registered Oregon voters returned their ballots during this year’s general election. The national average was about 64%.

“I don’t want it to get on the ballot, because I don’t think it’s worthy of getting on the ballot,” said Keisling.

“I think it’s badly written, I think it’s confusing. I think the intent is not something I agree with,” he added. “But if it does get to the ballot in November of 2026, I think it’ll be an opportunity for Oregonians to rise up and give a very resounding re-commitment to this at the silver anniversary mark of this one remarkable innovation that has now spread to eight states and the District of Columbia.”

Keisling is a Democrat, but Oregon’s lone Republican elected to statewide office in recent decades, former Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, also vouched for the election system’s security in 2017 while he was in office.

State Republican leaders have criticized Oregon’s elections system over the past year as the state revealed that its Motor Voter Program — which automatically registers people to vote when they get a new driver’s license — erroneously added more than 1,600 possible noncitizens to voter rolls. There are more than three million registered voters in Oregon.

Asked about the petition to prohibit vote by mail, Oregon Republican Party Chairwoman Connie Whelchel sent a statement to OPB, saying the party “supports efforts to strengthen election security and increase transparency to restore trust in our elections,” pointing to the issues with the Motor Voter Program.

“The End Vote By Mail initiative reflects the concerns of many Oregonians who want greater confidence in the process,” Whelchel said. “We must ensure that voting is easy, but cheating is impossible.”

Barbara Smith Warner, the executive director of the National Vote at Home Institute, disputed the notion that the push to end vote by mail is gathering momentum. She added: “I don’t believe it exists, all I know is that the President and his supporters — they are going on 10 years of attacking (mail-in voting) because they want to destabilize the electoral system.”

“These are people who, with a straight face, believe that Joe Biden did not win the presidency in 2020,” said Smith Warner, the former majority leader of the Oregon House of Representatives. “They started this in 2016, they continued it in 2020. They’re continuing it now. This is not momentum. This is an ongoing, coordinated attack on voting rights at their very core.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/08/28/ban-oregon-mail-in-voting-momentum/