Candidate filing opens today

SALEM, Ore. — The 2020 election is upon us. Candidate filing for offices for the May 19, 2020 Primary Election opened today, September 12, 2019. In the Federal offices, Oregonians will be voting for US President, US Senator, and US Representative. Oregon offices up for a vote include Secretary of State, State Treasurer, and Attorney General. Sixteen of Oregon’s thirty State Senator seats will be on the ballot and all sixty State Representative seats will be up for election.

Oregonians will also vote on members of the Oregon Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and Circuit Court. Twenty-one county District Attorney positions will also be voted upon.

There will also be local offices and measures that will appear on your ballot. For a full list of offices that will be voted on in 2020 visit https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/open-offices.pdf

Recent elections have not seen many people run, which means voters have not had much to choose from.

In the 2018 primary, for example, 91.7% of State Representative seats did not provide any choices as either no one filed to run or only one person filed. The State Senate seats were not much better with 85.1% where either no one filed to run or only one person filed. For Circuit Court seats only 18.9% had more than one candidate to choose from and only one of the fourteen District Attorney positions had more than one candidate.

Secretary of State Bev Clarno said, “As a lifelong volunteer, and serving in the legislature and now as Secretary of State, there is only one way to change things. I urge you to get involved and run for an office.”

It is easy to become a candidate. To learn how to run for office take a look at our Candidate Manual on our website at https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/statecandidates.pdf

Press release provided from the Office of Oregon Secretary of State, Bev Clarno.