County voting passes 27% as deadline nears.

Byline: OREGON PRIMARY 2006 By David Steves The Register-Guard

Even though they've had 18 days to vote in today's primary election, fewer than a quarter of eligible Oregonians have done so.

But that doesn't mean they won't.

"We are exactly where we were in 2002 at this time - and the final turnout in '02 was 46 percent," said Anne Martens, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, who oversees Oregon elections.

As of Monday, the state had recorded 454,765 ballots being returned to the 36 county elections offices - representing 23 percent of the 1.97 million ballots that were mailed to voters 18 days ago.

In Lane County, 27 percent of ballots had been returned as of Monday afternoon.

Since Oregon switched in 1998 from polling place and absentee-ballot voting to the use of mail ballots exclusively for elections, it has only once had an election comparable to today's: a non-presidential primary in which the governor's race tops the ticket for partisan voters. That was in 2002, when turnout reached 46 percent. In the previous comparable election before switching to all-mail ballots, the May 1998 primary, turnout was 35 percent.

For Oregon's turnout percentage this time around to match that of 2002, about double the number of ballots would have to be returned in the election's final two days.

Martens said that is entirely possible, given the trends of recent years. "People are turning in ballots later and later," she said, adding that there was no clear-cut explanation.

In the May 2002 election, 424,989 ballots had been cast as of the final Sunday before Election Day. On the final Monday, 160,505 had reached elections offices and an additional 267,681 - nearly one-third of all ballots cast in that election - came in on the final day of voting.

Annette Newingham, who oversees elections for Lane County, said the lack of widespread local money measures could keep voter turnout numbers down today.

Turnout must exceed 50 percent for such measures to be passed, and they also must be approved by a majority of voters. This "double-majority" requirement has led local supporters in recent years to mount aggressive get-out-the-vote campaigns.

In 2002, such campaigns in the Eugene School District and the city of Eugene helped bump up voter turnout for the entire county, which saw turnout of 47 percent.

This time around, only a small fraction of Lane County voters live in areas where local measures have spurred similar voter-turnout drives: the Bethel and Siuslaw school districts.

Newingham said that could help determine how much higher the voter turnout will go today before voting ends at 8 p.m. "We are going to have to receive a lot of ballots to get anywhere near 40 percent," she said.