For a full vote-by-mail jurisdiction, Multnomah County voters love voting in person! Data from the county shows that over half of November 2020 voters returned their ballots by hand at a drop box (rather than through the mail), and voters in precincts near drop boxes are most likely to utilize official drop sites. Despite changes to people’s daily habits in the pandemic, voters here really enjoy the convenience and security of dropping their ballots off in person at a neighborhood drop box. This is the first of two posts exploring data from Multnomah County about where and when voters returned their ballots in November 2020.
Election administrators across the country had to make large changes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but voters themselves were also required to adjust their voting habits in many ways. We’ve written previously about the challenges that local election administrators faced this year (including insights from some of our own survey research), but also wanted to examine how voters’ practices adapted in 2020.
Since the late 1990s, the state of Oregon has voted entirely by mail. However, it might be more accurate to say that Oregonians “vote at home” rather than “vote by mail”, as there are multiple paths for voters to return their ballots. The process starts 14 to 18 days before Election Day, when elections offices across the state mail a ballot to every registered voter. Once a voter receives their ballot, there are several options for them to return it to the county elections office:
Drop it off in one of the several ballot drop boxes in each county
Return it directly to the county elections office in person
Ballots must be received by any elections office in the state before 8:00 PM on Election Day, and any ballot returned to a different county will be transferred to the voter’s county of residence. If a voter never received a ballot or needs a replacement, they can go to their county elections office and have a new one created, then fill out that ballot on site and return it to election staff.
Ballot Return Options
With all of these potential options for ballot returns in mind, let’s look at the methods Multnomah County voters used to vote in the November 2020 election. This data comes from a breakdown of ballots received by date and location, released by the Multnomah County Elections Department after each election. These are categorized by return method into the following sources:
Mail, denoting ballots sent through USPS to Multnomah County Elections
Drop Box/Site, with two subcategories
“Drop Box/Site”, denoting ballots received at official drop boxes across the county
“Libraries”, denoting ballots returned to elections drop boxes or book returns inside county libraries
Counter/Office, with two subcategories
“Counter/Office”, denoting ballots received at the three ballot boxes in the lobby of the elections building on SE Morrison Street in Portland
“Elections Bldg”, denoting ballots dropped in the 24-hour drop boxes outside the elections building
Other County, denoting ballots returned to a different county’s elections office
Email, denoting ballots received by email – this is only available to military and overseas voters, covered under UOCAVA
Other, with three subcategories
“Voting Center Express”, denoting ballots received at the Voting Center Express in the Multnomah County East building (NE 8th Street, Gresham)
“VAT”, denoting ballots received by the Voter Assistance Team – the VAT aids voters who have requested assistance with their ballots
“Other”, for any other ballot return methods
Return Methods and Timeline in 2020
In the November 2020 election, most voters in vote-by-mail Multnomah County actually returned their ballots in person! The drop boxes (and library drop sites) across the county are well-loved by residents. Less than one third of voters used the mail to return their ballots. 11% of voters were in the Counter/Office category, which includes ballots cast inside the elections office in southeast Portland but is mostly made up of ballots collected from the 24-hour drop boxes outside the building. About 2% of ballots were initially received by other counties’ elections offices and then transmitted to Multnomah County. Almost all of the 5,830 ballots in the “Other” category were cast at the Voting Center Express in Gresham.
As expected, there is a large spike in drop box ballots on Election Day – in previous years almost 25% of all ballots were cast on the last day, but this year only 10% were. There is also a spike in drop box returns on Mondays (October 19, October 26, and November 2), with a very high spike on the first Monday after most voters received their ballots – part of this pattern is a clerical artifact, as ballots received on Sundays are not processed until the following Monday. The Counter/Office category is relatively flat over time, with similar spikes on Mondays.
Mail returns are high at first and trickle off in the week before the election, with spikes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This decline is mainly due to the deadline for ballots, which have to be received by Election Day instead of just postmarked by then (as in Washington, Utah, and other states). Oregon voters are warned to return their ballots in person once it gets closer to Election Day, since the USPS cannot guarantee delivery on time after a certain point – for the November 2020 election, Multnomah County recommended October 27 (one week before Election Day) as the last day to safely return a ballot through the mail and expect it to arrive on time.
Who’s Using Drop Boxes?
In addition to the data on ballot returns by date and location provided on the county elections website, we were able to obtain a dataset breaking down these ballot returns by precinct across several elections. While we can’t say anything about individual voters’ choices for returning their ballot based on this data, we can speak generally to a trend among the 113 precincts in Multnomah County.
Across the county, voters love using drop boxes – almost 85% of precincts saw a majority of their voters return their ballot in person at a drop box. Precincts closer in to the population centers of the county (Portland and Gresham) saw a slightly higher rate of drop box usage, with notably high pockets near the neighborhoods of St. Johns, Hollywood, and Multnomah Village. Even the far-east precincts saw over 50% drop box usage, while the precincts in outer Northwest Portland and beyond saw (comparatively) very low rates.
You may also notice that the drop box locations are also spread mostly throughout Portland and Gresham. Unsurprisingly, precincts physically closer to a drop box (measured from the centroid of all registered voters) are more likely to return their ballots in person. Each extra mile farther away from a dropbox was associated with an 8 point decrease in drop box usage for a given precinct.
We did notice, however, that this distance-only model doesn’t entirely explain the differences in drop box usage among precincts – only about 35% of the variation in drop box usage can be attributed to the precincts’ distances from a drop box. To try and find what the source of this extra variation might be, we attempted to model how drop box usage in each precinct was affected by partisanship and several demographic qualities, such as race/ethnicity, income, home ownership or rental status, age, and education. Unfortunately, these efforts were on the whole inconclusive. Because many of these demographic qualities are correlated with partisanship and location (for example, inner SE Portland residents are more likely than Troutdale residents to use a drop box, have a college degree, and vote for Democrats), we found it difficult to reliably identify any of these factors as having a consistent effect on drop box usage. Perhaps identifying such an effect might be possible with individual-level data on ballot return method, but that data is not currently available.
Overall, Multnomah County voters love their drop boxes! Over half of county voters returned their ballots at a drop box, and precincts closer to a drop box (or library drop site) are somewhat more likely to return their ballots in person. Drop boxes are a convenient and secure option for voters to return their mail ballots. With our next post, we’ll look at voters’ choices in November 2020 in the context of previous elections, where mail voting and the USPS were much less salient to the national political conversation.
For a full vote-by-mail jurisdiction, Multnomah County voters love voting in person! Data from the county shows that over half of November 2020 voters returned their ballots by hand at a drop box (rather than through the mail), and voters in precincts near drop boxes are most likely to utilize official drop sites. Despite changes to people’s daily habits in the pandemic, voters here really enjoy the convenience and security of dropping their ballots off in person at a neighborhood drop box. This is the first of two posts exploring data from Multnomah County about where and when voters returned their ballots in November 2020.
Election administrators across the country had to make large changes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but voters themselves were also required to adjust their voting habits in many ways. We’ve written previously about the challenges that local election administrators faced this year (including insights from some of our own survey research), but also wanted to examine how voters’ practices adapted in 2020.
Since the late 1990s, the state of Oregon has voted entirely by mail. However, it might be more accurate to say that Oregonians “vote at home” rather than “vote by mail”, as there are multiple paths for voters to return their ballots. The process starts 14 to 18 days before Election Day, when elections offices across the state mail a ballot to every registered voter. Once a voter receives their ballot, there are several options for them to return it to the county elections office:
Ballots must be received by any elections office in the state before 8:00 PM on Election Day, and any ballot returned to a different county will be transferred to the voter’s county of residence. If a voter never received a ballot or needs a replacement, they can go to their county elections office and have a new one created, then fill out that ballot on site and return it to election staff.
Ballot Return Options
With all of these potential options for ballot returns in mind, let’s look at the methods Multnomah County voters used to vote in the November 2020 election. This data comes from a breakdown of ballots received by date and location, released by the Multnomah County Elections Department after each election. These are categorized by return method into the following sources:
Return Methods and Timeline in 2020
In the November 2020 election, most voters in vote-by-mail Multnomah County actually returned their ballots in person! The drop boxes (and library drop sites) across the county are well-loved by residents. Less than one third of voters used the mail to return their ballots. 11% of voters were in the Counter/Office category, which includes ballots cast inside the elections office in southeast Portland but is mostly made up of ballots collected from the 24-hour drop boxes outside the building. About 2% of ballots were initially received by other counties’ elections offices and then transmitted to Multnomah County. Almost all of the 5,830 ballots in the “Other” category were cast at the Voting Center Express in Gresham.
As expected, there is a large spike in drop box ballots on Election Day – in previous years almost 25% of all ballots were cast on the last day, but this year only 10% were. There is also a spike in drop box returns on Mondays (October 19, October 26, and November 2), with a very high spike on the first Monday after most voters received their ballots – part of this pattern is a clerical artifact, as ballots received on Sundays are not processed until the following Monday. The Counter/Office category is relatively flat over time, with similar spikes on Mondays.
Mail returns are high at first and trickle off in the week before the election, with spikes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This decline is mainly due to the deadline for ballots, which have to be received by Election Day instead of just postmarked by then (as in Washington, Utah, and other states). Oregon voters are warned to return their ballots in person once it gets closer to Election Day, since the USPS cannot guarantee delivery on time after a certain point – for the November 2020 election, Multnomah County recommended October 27 (one week before Election Day) as the last day to safely return a ballot through the mail and expect it to arrive on time.
Who’s Using Drop Boxes?
In addition to the data on ballot returns by date and location provided on the county elections website, we were able to obtain a dataset breaking down these ballot returns by precinct across several elections. While we can’t say anything about individual voters’ choices for returning their ballot based on this data, we can speak generally to a trend among the 113 precincts in Multnomah County.
Across the county, voters love using drop boxes – almost 85% of precincts saw a majority of their voters return their ballot in person at a drop box. Precincts closer in to the population centers of the county (Portland and Gresham) saw a slightly higher rate of drop box usage, with notably high pockets near the neighborhoods of St. Johns, Hollywood, and Multnomah Village. Even the far-east precincts saw over 50% drop box usage, while the precincts in outer Northwest Portland and beyond saw (comparatively) very low rates.
You may also notice that the drop box locations are also spread mostly throughout Portland and Gresham. Unsurprisingly, precincts physically closer to a drop box (measured from the centroid of all registered voters) are more likely to return their ballots in person. Each extra mile farther away from a dropbox was associated with an 8 point decrease in drop box usage for a given precinct.
We did notice, however, that this distance-only model doesn’t entirely explain the differences in drop box usage among precincts – only about 35% of the variation in drop box usage can be attributed to the precincts’ distances from a drop box. To try and find what the source of this extra variation might be, we attempted to model how drop box usage in each precinct was affected by partisanship and several demographic qualities, such as race/ethnicity, income, home ownership or rental status, age, and education. Unfortunately, these efforts were on the whole inconclusive. Because many of these demographic qualities are correlated with partisanship and location (for example, inner SE Portland residents are more likely than Troutdale residents to use a drop box, have a college degree, and vote for Democrats), we found it difficult to reliably identify any of these factors as having a consistent effect on drop box usage. Perhaps identifying such an effect might be possible with individual-level data on ballot return method, but that data is not currently available.
Overall, Multnomah County voters love their drop boxes! Over half of county voters returned their ballots at a drop box, and precincts closer to a drop box (or library drop site) are somewhat more likely to return their ballots in person. Drop boxes are a convenient and secure option for voters to return their mail ballots. With our next post, we’ll look at voters’ choices in November 2020 in the context of previous elections, where mail voting and the USPS were much less salient to the national political conversation.
This is part one of a two-part series. Part two is available here.