Archive for the 'Road Trips' Category

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Oregon Student Association Registration Tours

Published on January 6, 2010 in Elections, Road Trips and Secretary Brown. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

This is a guest entry from Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown

Today I was lucky enough to be invited by the Oregon Student Association to their press conference in which they announced that they had registered a whopping 14,272 students to vote in just 3 months!

With this incredible accomplishment in mind, I want to share a little bit of what I experience on Monday and Tuesday during this tour of seven of Oregon’s university campuses: PCC Sylvania, PCC Casdcade, Mt. Hood Community College, Portland State University, University of Oregon, Oregon State  and Lane Community College.

The first thing I learned is that the students in this state are not sitting idly by while decisions are made in Salem. These students are showing us what civic engagement is all about.

And you should have seen them! Despite the cold and rainy weather, students were out on the streets of Eugene, Corvallis and Portland, fearlessly engaging their peers. Sometimes even after they had said no, or had walked right past without saying a thing.

They understand that sometimes voter registration comes one person at a time, but that each person they register could be the deciding vote. As someone who won her first race by 7 votes, I let them know just how important each and every voter they registered is, and I have to admit, I got caught up in their enthusiasm.

I was originally asked by the Student Association to talk about the role of students in the voting process during a set of ‘class raps’. We had so much fun with our scheduled raps, which sometimes had as many as 500 students in attendance, that we started up a series of ‘Guerilla Raps’, which were class raps in classrooms where we weren’t scheduled to speak. OSA approached professors and asked for permission and we launched right in. It was a great way to reach out to even more students before the registration deadline.

I also got an opportunity to help the students by hitting the streets and registering voters. We came across all kinds of students from all kinds of backgrounds including a couple of 17 year-olds taking advantage of a recent development in Oregon’s voting law, which allows 17 year-old Oregonians to register to vote in the election following their 18th birthday.

I walked away from the two day tour with a tremendous respect for the students in our great state. I saw an amazing level of dedication from those who took their time out of their busy schedules to volunteer. These volunteers are a credit to our state and will insure that the health of our democracy remains strong for another generation. I also came away with a sense that young people are paying attention to the world around them and that sometimes all it takes is their peers giving them information and they will respond.

I want to thank the Oregon Student Association for this opportunity and congratulate them on a tremendous job well done!

Kate Brown is the Oregon Secretary of State

Stories from the Road – October

Published on October 30, 2009 in Road Trips and Secretary Brown. 0 Comments Tags: , .

As part of a regular series, Secretary of State Kate Brown logged this report from her time on the road.

Soon after taking office in January I promised to visit all of Oregon’s 36 counties.

It was easy to ignore the groans from my staff but a little more difficult to arrange the logistics. This is, as we know, a large state, more than 98,000 square miles, making it the ninth largest in the country. My travels reminded me of our good fortune in living in such a spectacularly beautiful state.

I’m happy to report that even with the press of the Legis­lature, I’ve so far visited 30 counties and have plans in the works to visit the other 6 by the end of 2009.

But the best part of my travels have been meeting with the county clerks and their staffs and hearing about the issues they work with, which are quite different than what goes on in the more urban counties west of the Cascades. Some of our smaller counties have been hit hard by the downturn in the economy, especially those dependant on the resource industries, and they struggle to keep up with matters bigger counties take for granted.

In Prineville, Crook County Clerk Dee Berman gave me a tour of the wonderful stone county courthouse that celebrated its 100th birthday this year. She also told me a story about how she agreed last fall to drive way out of town to help a sight-impaired man vote. “As long as you’re coming;’ he added, “would you mind stopping to pick me up a can of coffee and a gallon of milk? The one with the red lid.” She said she would and brought him some doughnuts as well.

SoS June 4-5 Road Trip 010-resized

Secretary Brown with Grant County Chief Deputy Clerk Brenda Percy

In Grant County, Chief Deputy Clerk Brenda Percy showed me the huge books that are still used to record all official county transactions: deeds, marriages, name changes, property transactions, everything. Like other rural counties, they have shelves filled with these giant ledgers that look like something out of Gringott’s Bank in the Harry Potter novels. They can post some things on their web site, but their entire history is in those books and they can’t even afford to put everything on microfilm. One fire could wipe out their history.

So I’m going to ask the Legislature to find ways to help the counties preserve their history and bring their record ­keeping up to date. I want to make sure we do what we can to preserve this important part of Oregon history.

As part of my efforts, this month I embarked on a two day trip through Malheur and Harney counties.

My first stop with the Argus Observer, where I was interviewed for a story. I was happy to see Pat Caldwell, the Argus Observer’s editor and one of 5 Caldwell brothers, some of whom I know through their hard work here in Oregon.

After that, we took a trip to meet with Harney County Clerk, Maria Iturriaga. She gave us some tremendous input on the recall process in rural communities that I am talking with my staff about. She told me that recall laws are too broad and that the recall process is extremely divisive in rural communities. The example she gave me was a recall that took place 15 years ago, which left wounds that are still healing to this day.

Next up was a Lunch Forum hosted by the Treasure Valley Community College’s Business Center and the local Rotary club, followed by a meeting with the Harney County Commissioners. In both of these meetings, I came away with the same, strong message: Times are tough and the community needs to use a team approach to tackle the challenges it’s faced with; it doesn’t really matter if I agree with you politically. In fact, one of the commissioners said to the group, “If your house is on fire, it doesn’t matter if i like you or not, you need me to help you put it out”

I have to agree. I’ve seen how this State is struggling in this time of economic crisis and I believe that the best way forward is to join hands with our political neighbors and forge ahead as a unit. Our figurative house is burning, we need to work together to put out the fire.