According to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office, Donald Trump will be on the November ballot in Oregon even though no Trump or Vance information is printed in the voter’s pamphlet, causing MAGA supporters to overwhelm the Secretary of State’s office with phone calls, some involving death threats and threats of violence.
There’s one simple reason, however, that Trump and Vance are missing from the voter information guide: Despite repeated reminders from the Secretary of State they never paid the optional $3,500 fee and missed the deadline to be included. Once the pamphlets were mailed out, the problem reached such a pitch that the state office closed its phone lines.
For those concerned, it’s not just some blue-state chicanery indicating election interference. In April, the Oregon Republican Party released a statement about the primary pamphlet, confirming Trump’s campaign chose not to submit the information or pay the fee, which means there would be no listing in the general election pamphlet, either.
“The decision not to submit a statement for the voter’s pamphlet was made by the Trump campaign earlier this year,” the Oregon GOP statement said in part. The pamphlet lists Trump and Vance, among many other candidates, missing because their campaigns never supplied the necessary information.
“We reached out repeatedly to the campaign to ensure they were aware of the deadline to submit a statement to the pamphlet and never received a response,” Oregon’s Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson Laura Kerns told USA Today of the blowback. “Donald Trump will absolutely be on the ballot,” Kerns said.
“Absolutely election interference!”
Despite Oregon officials and even the Oregon GOP’s best efforts to contain the misinformation and explain what happened, MAGA theories have proliferated on social media, insisting Oregon is interfering in the election. The story was even covered on the Libs of TikTok channel, known to spread MAGA-centric Right-Wing misinformation.
Some unconfirmed posts also speculate that the Trump campaign may have done it on purpose to lay the groundwork for election fraud claims should they lose. So far, there’s no evidence to suggest that’s the case. Democrats have won the last nine presidential elections in Oregon, so perhaps the Trump-Vance campaign figured the state was a lost cause. Or, as one comment pointed out, “Trump disrespected his own voters by being too cheap or lazy to get into the voters guide.”
Oregon has voted by mail since the late 1980s and in federal elections since the mid-1990s. Trump has long spread conspiracy theories about vote by mail, alleging election fraud, according to CNN. Several sources, including the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Brennan Center for Justice, have called voting by mail safe and secure. The Heritage Foundation doesn’t like it, but these are the same folks who brought us Project 2025, so that tracks. As for Oregon, 2024 presidential election ballots were mailed out roughly two weeks before the vote, so when they start arriving in mailboxes with Trump and Vance listed, the controversy will hopefully die down.
Published: Oct 18, 2024 02:23 pm