GOTV Oregon, a Republican-aligned political action committee, says it aims to send a 1,000-strong volunteer and paid-chaser effort across five regions of Oregon during the final 72 hours before the Nov. 3 election. The group is offering to take sealed ballots to drop boxes for voters who hand them over.
GOTV Oregon says on its website that its Oct. 31-Nov. 2 effort will focus on reminding voters to return ballots, answering questions and legally carrying sealed ballots to drop boxes. The group says it has signed up more than 1,000 two-hour volunteer shifts. Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that Republican political operatives and supporters formed the PAC, that six GOP lawmakers contributed campaign funds and that it has raised roughly $60,000.
The group says it aims to elect Christine Drazan governor and break the Democratic legislative supermajority. OPB reports that GOTV Oregon is primarily encouraging likely Republican voters to submit ballots and is targeting Clackamas County, the north coast, the Columbia River Gorge and Marion County.
Close Races Shape the Turnout Push
Drazan's path to the governorship has a narrow recent history behind it. She lost Oregon's 2022 gubernatorial race by fewer than 70,000 votes, according to Oregon Catalyst, which also notes that 120,000 registered Republicans never returned a ballot that year. Oregon Catalyst reports that Democrats clinched the House seat that handed them their legislative supermajority by just 161 votes in 2024 — numbers Republicans are citing as evidence that a disciplined ballot-chasing push could flip outcomes.
This year's race pits incumbent Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek against Drazan, the Republican challenger, the Oregon Capital Chronicle notes. Oregon Republican political consultant and legislative staffer Bryan Iverson is coordinating the strategy, per OPB's reporting, and has said voters who decline to hand over their ballots may still receive information about drop box locations and recommended candidates.
The GOP's Earlier Opposition to Ballot Collection
Oregon Republicans have previously criticized ballot collection and sought to make it illegal, OPB reports. Drazan introduced a bill to ban ballot harvesting while serving in the Oregon House in 2025; it failed in the Democratic-controlled chamber. OPB also reports that two Republican gubernatorial primary candidates said this year they wanted to outlaw the practice, even as Drazan's campaign discussed using ballot collection to increase turnout.
Bruce Starr, a supporter of the effort, has characterized GOTV Oregon's work as complementary to Drazan's campaign rather than directly connected to it, OPB reports. Starr has described the effort as get-out-the-vote work and argued that Republicans could win if every Republican ballot and every common-sense unaffiliated voter's ballot were returned. Ballot collection is legal in Oregon when the rules are followed, according to OPB.
Rules for Returning Another Voter's Ballot
Those basic rules carry real weight. Guidance cited from the Oregon Secretary of State says anyone helping return another voter's ballot must deposit it at an official drop box or place it in the mail within two days of receiving it, or by Election Day, whichever comes first, and the office strongly encourages using a drop box. Separately, restrictions on collecting or returning another person's ballot are subject to exceptions.
What Official Records Show About Ballot Returns
A recent primary provides a snapshot of how Oregonians returned ballots, though it does not establish how return methods or statewide turnout have changed over time. In the May 19, 2026, primary, 784,084 ballots, or 61.02% of those returned, came through drop boxes, according to the Oregon Secretary of State. The same report recorded 14,577 challenges over non-matching signatures: 5,516 were cured and 9,061 were rejected. The Secretary of State also says ballots arriving after Election Day and the seven-day grace period are not counted.
History shows the risk of mishandling collected ballots. A union-backed PAC called Defend Oregon misplaced nearly 100 ballots from the November 2018 election, and Oregon's then-Secretary of State Dennis Richardson's office proposed fining the group $94,750 for turning them in after Election Day, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive. Since the election had already passed, those 96 ballots were never counted, though the outlet reports Defend Oregon ultimately avoided much of the nearly $95,000 fine.
Democrats Say They Won't Chase Ballots This Cycle
Democrats interviewed by OPB said ballot harvesting carries high risk for relatively little reward, and the party's campaigns are not conducting the practice this year, a continuation of a stance OPB reports has held for several election cycles. Instead, the Democratic Party of Oregon runs a get-out-the-vote operation with allied groups, and Tom Crawford has said party volunteers and staff help voters fill out and return ballots by Election Day, per OPB. Democratic ground campaigns have also used volunteers from labor unions and allied groups to encourage ballot returns.
OPB reports that Iverson cited Democratic organizing in the unsuccessful 2024 effort by Raymond Love to unseat state Sen. Chris Gorsek in Senate District 25, and said Democrats should be cautiously optimistic but were not gaining ground.
The Ballot Count So Far
Early returns give both sides something to point to. More than half a million Oregon voters had returned ballots as of last Monday, about 16% of the state's 3.1 million registered voters, according to the Oregon Capital Chronicle. Secretary of State Tobias Read urged voters to use one of more than 300 drop boxes located across the state, the outlet reported.
Of ballots received by that point, about 46% came from Democrats — more than 236,000 — while Republicans accounted for roughly 30% and unaffiliated and minor-party voters made up the rest, the Capital Chronicle reported. DHM Research senior vice president John Horvick said turnout was slightly outpacing previous years, particularly on the Democratic side, but cautioned that the early mix typically skews that way. Horvick said the partisan makeup of returned ballots will likely become more Republican as Election Day nears, since Democrats tend to vote earlier in the cycle.
