The leading Republican candidates for Oregon governor have raised concerns about election security and public trust in the state’s voting system, but have stopped short of calling for major changes to Oregon’s vote-by-mail system.
Oregonians have voted exclusively by mail for nearly three decades. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to impose new restrictions on mail-in voting and voter registration, though Oregon and several other Democratic-led states sued to block the order.
The top Republicans hoping to challenge Gov. Tina Kotek this fall — Sen. Christine Drazan of Canby, Rep. Ed Diehl of Scio, former Trail Blazer Chris Dudley and Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell — have all cited some criticisms of Oregon’s voting system but have generally acknowledged that voting by mail remains popular.
Last year, Drazan co-sponsored a bill that would have switched Oregon mostly to in-person voting. The bill did not advance in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Meanwhile, Bethell said she signed a ballot initiative seeking to end mail-in voting in Oregon.
Here is what the four candidates said about the state’s voting system in a May 4 debate hosted by City Club of Portland and television station KOIN:
Christine Drazan
“I had legislation to go to in-person voting while protecting access to the absentee ballot that so many Oregonians have grown accustomed to. One of the reasons that I advanced legislation at that level is because, as everybody remembers, the DMV had been registering voters that were not eligible to actually vote in the state of Oregon, over 1,600 voters were actually registered here that were not eligible voters.
“We had our new secretary of state in front of our committee this last session (in 2025), and I asked him directly, ‘Whose job is it to ensure that, or that all of the voters who vote in Oregon are eligible?’ He said it was his job. And so I asked him, ‘Do you have access to the data and the information to do that job?’ And he said, ‘No, I do not believe I do so at this time.’ I found that incredibly troubling and problematic, as all Oregonians should. We need to strengthen our elections. We need to ensure that people believe that our elections are secure, and in fact, they need to be secure.”
Ed Diehl
“I want to start with the election integrity items that I’m calling for on my platform. And number one, I’m calling for voter ID, proof of U.S. citizenship, cleaning up our voter rolls, which the federal law requires, and also looking at reforming our ballot harvesting laws.
“I’m also calling for full transparency of the existing election process, and that means educating voters on how vote-by-mail works, and how chain of custody works, what voter churn is, how signature verification works. I put it this way: Oregon kind of invented vote-by-mail. And if you ask the average Oregonian today, do they want to eliminate vote by mail, they’re going to say, ‘no,’ they’re accustomed to it. And so I’m not calling to eliminate vote-by-mail. I’m calling to add strength and integrity — strengthening items to our election process and add more transparency to the process.”
Chris Dudley
“I also support what the people want, but I also want people to have belief and integrity and faith in the balloting system right now. Everybody, whether you’re Republican, Democrat, independent, should want one vote per one person who’s here legally. And right now there’s a loss of confidence, and we need to restore that integrity, and it’s a problem across our state, and as I’ve traveled the state, I’ve heard that from many people, and it dismays me how many people do not have faith in our election system.
“As governor, I will do everything to restore that integrity or have people believe in the system. We have to focus on it. We have to clean the voter rolls. It shouldn’t take Judicial Watch pushing to remove 800,000 names from our ballots. (Those 800,000 individuals were classified as inactive voters and were not sent ballots, according to state officials.) Whether they were going to vote or not, doesn’t matter. They shouldn’t have been there. We need to stay on top of it. We have to restore confidence in the people, and I will do whatever it takes to restore that confidence for the people of Oregon. We deserve that, and we need that.”
Danielle Bethell
“In general, I support what people want. I’ve signed the initiative petition to repeal vote by mail because of the insecurity that Oregonians have statewide. While it’s true, I’ve been traveling around Oregon for the last year on this campaign, and I have heard mixed emotions from everybody, from Republicans to Democrats to (non-affiliated voters), about how they feel about it.
“We shouldn’t have a system that should be one of the most sacred systems for our constitutional rights in this country be questioned by people who are casting a ballot because of insecurity in whether or not their ballot is coming back through ballot harvesting, which I think should be illegal. We don’t fund elections. Well, in fact, it’s an unfunded mandate for most counties, if not all counties, in Oregon to produce elections because the Legislature doesn’t work with the secretary of state to fund elections properly. In addition to that, I don’t think motor voter should exist. It’s one of the biggest challenged, insecure systems we have in Oregon. I’ll support what the people want. I believe we should have elections in person, but I understand why we have mail-in voting.”
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