Dear Speaker Fahey and Chair Bowman:

As Vice-Chair of the House Rules Committee, I am requesting that you invite the Oregon Secretary of State to the committee hearing on Friday, May 31, 2024. In light of the recent issues arising over completed ballots not being delivered to county elections offices by the United States Postal Service, I feel it is necessary to hear directly from the Secretary of State.

Oregonians deserve to have full faith and trust in our elections system, and it is the Secretary of State’s job to establish and maintain that faith and trust. Even today, as I write this letter, the Secretary of State is using the hashtag #TrustedInfo2024 on social media. However, as of this writing, the Secretary of State’s office has yet to share any details or plan to prevent these same delays in the November general election. How can we trust their silence?

In a recent Oregon Public Broadcasting article, Molly Woon, the state’s elections director said “In no uncertain terms, they [USPS representatives] have said, ‘We will fix this. This should not be happening.’ We continue to have complete faith in the vote-by-mail system.” I look forward to hearing how the SOS and USPS will fix this. Unless I hear a specific plan to prevent similar delays, I find it hard to blindly have the same “complete faith” in the vote-by-mail system. At a bare minimum, we wish to hear answers to the following questions:

• How many ballots were affected and which counties experienced delays?
• Specifically, what actions were taken to remedy the current situation?
• How will the SOS ensure these same delays don’t occur for the November election?