All of Oregon’s 36 counties follow the same process under the Oregon Secretary of State’s vote-by-mail manual.

ALBANY — In 1981, former Linn County Clerk Del Riley had a thought: If he was already required to print and mail out sample ballots before each election, why not just mail out real ballots to save money on printing expenses?

He asked the Oregon secretary of state and the Oregon Legislature if he could try a vote-by-mail election and conducted a test run with a school levy that fall. Voter turnout in that election was more than 75%, nearly 20 percentage points higher than voter participation in the primary a year prior.

Local jurisdictions and later the state kept testing mail voting, and by 2000, Oregon was the first state in the nation to run all elections by mail.…