Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregonians have until Tuesday to register for this month’s  up-coming special election.  Kristian Foden-Vencil reports.

The election will give voters a chance to weigh in on tax measures 66 and 67, which would generate about $700 million for state coffers.

Registration cards can be found at post offices, DMVs and at county election offices. The cards need to be handed in or post-marked by Tuesday, January 5th.

Don Hamilton, a spokesman for the Oregon Secretary of State, concedes that January 26th is an odd time to hold an election. But he says, there's a good reason.

Don Hamilton: "Legislators don't live in a vacuum when it comes to these issues and they were very aware of the possibility that any tax measure that they passed, could wind-up on the ballot."

They did end up on the ballot, so the January election gives lawmakers time to adjust the budget in February, if the tax measures fail.

Despite the fact the election involves taxes - OPB's political analyst, Bill Lunch, doesn't expect a big turn-out.

Bill Lunch: "I'd be a little bit surprised if the number of ballots returned were to reach 50 percent of those who are registered. We have about 2.1 million registered voters in Oregon.  So a million perhaps. Maybe 900,000 or something like that."

He bases his estimate on the last time Oregon held an election in January. It was in 1996 and Ron Wyden won the senate seat vacated by Bob Packwood.

In this month’s special election, turn-out is not important to the result -- there's no requirement for more than 50 percent of the electorate to take part for the vote to count.

There is one last point of interest. While postmarks count for voter registration, they do not count for the actual election -- ballots have to be in the hands of election officials by 8 p.m. January 26th.