Election offices in Oregon would need to receive a massive influx of 700,000 or more ballots on Tuesday and beyond to match turnout levels seen in the last two presidential elections.

According to the Oregon Elections Division, as of close of business Monday, county election offices reported receiving ballots from only 55% of Oregon's nearly 3.1 million registered voters. In contrast, voter turnout in states reached 62% the day before the election in November 2016 and a whopping 73% at the same point in 2020.

Statewide voter turnout ultimately reached 80% in 2016 and 82% in 2020.

If 700,000 ballots arrive now and flood election offices, that would far exceed the number and proportion of ballots ever received in a day. In 2016, the Oregon Elections Division reported that offices received ballots on Election Day from 463,000 people, or about 18% of registered voters, a state record. (Oregon had about 500,000 fewer registered voters at the time.)

It's also possible that Oregon is on track to see slightly or even significantly lower voter turnout than in past presidential elections.

If the state experiences a flood of ballots, most of them will arrive on Tuesday. But more will be added in the coming days thanks to a 2021 Oregon law that allows ballots to be accepted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and received at county election offices within a week.

If even close to 700,000 Oregonians cast their ballots on the final day, it would signal a definitive shift toward voting late in the election cycle, a change after Democrats' enthusiasm in 2020 led to a massive trend toward early voting. The decline in ballots returned before Election Day. This cycle reflects a nationwide decline.

Multnomah County voters in particular are lagging behind their previous track record, with only 50% of ballots cast by the end of the day on Monday.

Based on historical numbers, the county elections office said it expects 81% voter turnout statewide this November. But to reach that total, about 180,000 Multnomah ballots would have to arrive on Tuesday and subsequent days — nearly double the roughly 98,000 ballots the county received on Election Day 2016.

— Aviva Bechky covers politics and education for The Oregonian/OregonLive. You can be reached at [email protected] or to X @avivabechky.

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