Check My Vote on the Secretary of State’s site. It shows when your ballot was mailed and when the election office received it; allow one to two business days for it to update. My Vote is not available for confidential voters.

Between 20 and 14 days before an election, to every registered voter. For November 3 that means ballots went out on October 14. If you are not yet 18, you will not get one until an election falls on or after your birthday.

Only if it gets a postal mark dated that day, and it still has to reach the county office within seven days after. Mailing on the last day means betting on the post office doing both. A drop box has no postmark requirement at all, which is why we keep pointing at them.

The county mails you a notice explaining how to fix it, and you have up to 21 days after the election to resolve it. Sign the way you normally sign your name, not necessarily your full legal signature. If your signature has changed, you can put a new one on file by submitting a voter registration card at any post office, library, city hall, or the courthouse in Coquille.

Yes. Draw a line through the entire choice you do not want, then fill in the oval next to the choice you do want. Do not use correction fluid. If you fill in more ovals than the contest allows, your vote in that contest does not count. Leaving a contest blank is fine, and the contests you did fill in still count.

Contact the county election office at elections@co.coos.or.us or (541) 396-7610 and they will issue a replacement. You can also walk in at 250 N Baxter St, Coquille. If you will be away from home, apply for an absentee ballot using the form on the county’s Forms page: ballots are never forwarded by the post office.

You get a new one. A chewed, shredded, or otherwise destroyed ballot counts as destroyed, and the Secretary of State’s rule is simple: contact your county elections office for a replacement. Call Coos County Elections at (541) 396-7610 or email elections@co.coos.or.us, or walk in at 250 N Baxter St, Coquille. Three things decide how fast you have to move:

• You can only get a replacement if you have not already returned a ballot for this election.
• A replacement can be mailed up to five days before the election, so through October 28. From October 29 on you have to pick it up in person at the county office.
• With a week or less to go, use a drop box instead of the mail for the replacement. A drop box has no postmark to argue about.

Do not tape the pieces back together and send it in, and do not try to fill in what is left of it. Bring whatever survived with you to the office so the ruined ballot can be cancelled and not counted twice. If the office is closed and you are down to the last day, call the nonpartisan hotline 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) and they will help you reach someone.

Usually yes. A mark outside the ovals is an extraneous mark, and the Secretary of State’s Vote by Mail Procedures Manual tells counting boards to disregard marks like a voter’s own name, initials, or a slip of the pen unless the mark has a bearing on the vote. What actually decides it is whether the county can tell what you meant.

• A mark in the margin, or beside a contest you did not vote in: nothing happens to any vote. It is ignored.
• A dot or a partial fill in a second oval in the same contest: the scanner may read it as a double vote. That is what adjudication is for. In Coos County two staff of different political parties review the image of your ballot and, where it is clear what you intended, complete or duplicate the ballot so the intended vote is counted.
• A scribble over an oval so that nobody can tell which one you meant: that one contest is not counted (ORS 254.505). Every other contest on the ballot still is, and the ballot is not thrown out as a whole.
• Do not cover a mark with a sticker, tape, or correction fluid. Oregon law makes a ballot with a sticker or other device on it void, and the county’s advice is no correction fluid. Scrubbing at an oval hard enough to smear it into the next one is the other way a small mistake becomes a real one.

If you have not returned the ballot yet and the mark worries you, get a replacement instead of hoping: (541) 396-7610. Once a ballot is in a drop box it cannot be pulled back or changed, and the county will not call you about a stray mark to ask what you meant.

Yes. Anyone you trust can return your ballot: a friend, a neighbour, a family member, a caregiver. Oregon law sets no restriction on who may hand it in. What it does require is speed: whoever takes it must deposit it at a drop box, the county office, or in the mail within two days of taking it from you, and no later than 8:00 p.m. on November 3.

Yes. Every drop box in Coos County is watched by video camera, day and night. The county says the new Charleston box is monitored the same way as the rest, and the Secretary of State says the same about all 321 drop boxes in Oregon: every one is monitored, and every one carries fire suppression technology.

The boxes are built to protect the ballots inside them. They sit outdoors, so they are made to shed rain and keep the ballots dry, and they are locked and sealed with only election staff holding the key. The suppressant inside is a dry chemical rather than water, so if a box ever does catch fire it puts the fire out without soaking the ballots it is there to protect. In Multnomah County in 2024, a fire set at a drop box was put out by the suppressant inside the box, and only three of the 412 ballots in it were damaged.

Your ballot does not sit in the box until Election Day. The county collects the ballots on a regular schedule and takes them straight to the elections office, and the pickups get more frequent as the election gets closer.

Yes, update your registration at My Vote. For a name change, use the paper registration form so the county has a record of your new signature. You must be registered at least 21 days before an election to receive a ballot for it.

It is common and it is not fraud. One envelope says “original” and another “reissued” or “replacement,” usually because your address changed after ballots were printed. The original is deactivated when the new one is issued. Return one. If more than one is returned, only one can be counted and the county refers the rest to the Secretary of State. If you are unsure which to use, call the election office.

Oregon has no polling places. You can vote at the county elections office in Coquille, where privacy booths are set up in the hallway, or hand your completed ballot in at the counter. The office is open Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to noon and 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., and 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on election day.

Coos County Elections: (541) 396-7610 or elections@co.coos.or.us. For anything that looks like interference at a drop box, use the nonpartisan hotline 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683), call or text. Email us at info@coosindivisible.org to volunteer at the rally or ask a question.

This came up at the ballot party, and a few of you have asked since, so here it is plainly. A protest vote is a real tool, and there is a right place for it: the primary. If you are unhappy with an incumbent, voting for the primary challenger is how you tell your own party that it has a support problem, and it lands where the party can actually hear it.

The general election works differently. In a general, a vote for a candidate who cannot win is not a message, it is a subtraction. It hands the seat to the candidate who can win, and that is usually the one furthest from what you wanted. Staying home is the same subtraction, and it also agrees that things should stay as they are. No third party candidate has won in this system, and until we have ranked choice voting that arithmetic does not change.

So the question in the booth is not who you want to send a message to. It is how you would feel if the other side won because of your vote. If that answer is bad, the protest belongs in the primary, or on a doorstep. If you are upset enough to protest a general election with your vote, then you should be upset enough to knock on doors in a primary.

We are not telling you who to vote for. We are telling you what the arithmetic does, so the choice you make on your ballot is a decision and not a surprise.