Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said voters should make a county drop box their first option for returning ballots in the May 19 primary election. Although Read said that utilizing mail service remains a workable option, he believes drop boxes are the more reliable choice this cycle.
“We’d love it if they could use a county drop box … there’s a lot of cuts and uncertainty going on with the Postal Service,” Read told the Philomath News on Saturday afternoon before a town hall at the local high school. “Of course, we’ve got plenty of time. My voter’s pamphlet arrived in the last day or two, so you can start studying up, and there’s no reason to wait until the ballot shows up.”
Read appeared at the town hall alongside Rep. David Gomberg (D-Otis). The event, a small gathering of a little more than 20 people, was held in the local high school auditorium and was emceed by Philomath Mayor Christopher McMorran. The two answered questions for about an hour — some submitted online ahead of time and others from attendees at the microphone.
The voter registration deadline is coming up April 28. Ballots are scheduled to be mailed to voters beginning April 29, and the last recommended day to mail a ballot is May 12. Ballots must be received by local elections officials or postmarked by Election Day on May 19.
Locally, a drop box is located near the entrance to Philomath Community Library at 1050 Applegate St.
McMorran opened the event by tying Read’s visit to the upcoming election.
“It’s a really great time to have both of them here, especially Secretary Read,” McMorran said. “As you all know, primary elections are coming up on May 19 and one of the secretary’s jobs is making sure we have well run and secure elections. So this is a really timely conversation.”
Defending vote-by-mail
Read’s appearance came two days after he and 23 other states’ attorneys general, along with the governor of Pennsylvania, filed a motion for summary judgment asking a federal court to permanently block President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting. The order would direct the Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters on a federally preapproved list and require tracking barcodes on ballot envelopes.
Read framed the motion as the latest round in a fight Oregon has been winning.
“It’s just the latest example of the president issuing an executive order that we believe to be unconstitutional,” Read said. “We beat him on the first one of those a year-plus ago. We defeated his attempt to access our voter file, so we’re 2-0 in court against him. We expect that will be the same thing in this case.”
Read called the order “totally obviously unconstitutional” and said the president had turned to executive action because he could not pass the SAVE Act in Congress.
“He’s just desperate,” Read said. “He knows he’s unpopular, he knows his congressional majorities are at risk, and so he’s lashing out. But I think we’ll prevail.”
Read said Oregon’s vote-by-mail system — adopted by ballot measure in 1998 — remains secure and accurate.
“Despite all the myths and disinformation that’s out there, people need to know that Oregon elections are safe and accurate and fair, and we’re going to defend our authority to do that,” he said. “We will vote by mail here because it’s accurate, because it’s accessible, because it works. People love it.”
For voters who mail their ballots within a week of Election Day, Read suggested taking the envelope to a post office and asking a clerk to apply a hand postmark. Mail from Philomath travels to Portland for postmarking and processing before being returned for delivery.
Where the job is hardest
Read took office in January 2025 having identified accountability, managing tax dollars and securing elections as his top priorities. Asked which part of the job has been harder than expected, he pointed first to the courtroom.
“I didn’t expect to be in a federal courtroom as a defendant,” Read said. “I didn’t expect that we were playing defense against the federal government on fundamental things like democracy. So that’s taking more time than I wish.”
The other stretch, he said, has been audits. Read’s office is rethinking how it selects audit targets, with the state budget growing year over year while the number of state auditors has not.
“When I was treasurer, everyone had a stock tip,” Read said. “Now everyone has something they want audited. Well, mostly good ideas, but we have to be careful and intentional about where we select.”
Asked about Benton County’s use of ranked-choice voting for some local races, Read said his office’s role does not change based on ballot style.
“We support every county clerk,” he said. “Make sure they run things well and have the resources they need.”
Focus on local races, issues
Gomberg, who is in his sixth term representing House District 10, said the timing of the town hall was deliberate.
“With an election looming, I think that elections are on people’s minds, and they want to have confidence in the process, and some people have questions,” Gomberg said. “This is a great opportunity to get straight answers from the people that are making the decisions and reviewing the process.”
Gomberg said he hears the same concerns across the district, which stretches from Lincoln City to Junction City and from Florence to Philomath.
“They’re concerned about affordability. They’re concerned about the cost of gasoline, groceries and rent,” he said. “They’re concerned about the state of our environment and the quality of our education and what the future is going to look like.”
He urged Philomath voters not to overlook down-ballot races. The May 19 ballot includes a Philomath Fire and Rescue levy, a proposed city ban on psilocybin and a contested county commission race, as well as the statewide referral of the gas tax.
“Local elections matter, and the lower you get on the ballot, I think the less attention those races are getting, but they’re critically, critically important,” Gomberg said. “It’s the pothole in front of your house, whether the sewer system works, the quality of education you’re getting, the kind of library you’re going to have or how long it’s going to take somebody to respond if you call 911 when you’ve got a fire.”
Gomberg also pointed to the gas tax referral and the contested Republican gubernatorial primary as reasons to return a ballot.
A billion dollars in cuts
Gomberg, who serves as co-vice chair of the Joint Ways and Means Committee and co-chair of its Transportation and Economic Development subcommittee, said federal tax and spending changes left the state about $700 million short heading into the February short session. The referral of the 2025 gas tax increase added roughly $350 million in cuts to the Oregon Department of Transportation.
“If you’re keeping track, that’s more than a billion dollars that we were looking at having to cut,” Gomberg said.
Rebalancing ODOT, he said, meant leaving as much as 20% of the agency’s positions vacant, reducing programs like Safe Routes to Schools, scaling back support for ports and rail lines, and delaying repairs on dozens of rural bridges flagged as weak or seismically vulnerable.
“When we finally do get around repairing those bridges, it’s not going to be cheaper,” Gomberg said. “So those are things that impact rural Oregonians, particularly.”
Gomberg, who filed for re-election last fall, said transportation will continue to drive his work in Salem. He pointed to the Philomath streetscapes project as an example of recent investment in the district and said he is now working with the state crabbing commission on whale entanglements caused by abandoned crab gear.
“We have whales washing ashore on our Oregon Coast almost every week now, and a big part of the problem is the crabbing gear that’s left in the water, abandoned, essentially sea trash, but just dangerous sea trash,” Gomberg said.
A second town hall with Gomberg and Read is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. May 9 at the Lincoln City Community Center.
