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Election day is right around the corner. Have you voted yet?

If you haven’t, you’re not alone. It seems like not many people are choosing to participate this time around.

Rogue Valley Times reporter Nick Morgan covered a test run of ballot scanning at the Jackson County Elections Office on Tuesday. At that demonstration, Jackson County Clerk Chris Walker noted that turnout so far this election cycle is dramatically low. As of midweek, ballot returns only tallied 7.7%.

“Really at this point it’s just very, very slow,” Walker said.

Walker had thought a month ago that the turnout rate would be closer to 50% considering this year’s election included highly publicized ballot measures open to nonaffiliated voters.

“We’re just here waiting for the ballots,” she said.

“Walker did not mention them by name, but measures 15-224, 15-225 and 15-226 — all backed by the group Jackson County for All — seek to make Jackson County commissioner a nonpartisan position, expand the county’s Board of Commissioners from three to five seats and limit commissioner pay to $75,000 per year,” Nick wrote.

Tuesday’s primary vote in Oregon also will usher in automatic uncontested winners and set up November general election battles for contested seats, including circuit court judge, Jackson County district attorney, county commissioner, and legislative, statewide and federal office. These are important races that will have an impact in our communities.

Because we believe any election is important — it’s a real-time exercise in democracy — Rogue Valley Times reporters and our freelance writer Damian Mann spent a good part of early to mid April conducting candidate interviews and writing about local measures. We began publishing our stories online at the end of April and had our final election story on the measures to change the makeup and salary of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners post to our website April 29.

We then published each article we wrote in our print editions so print readers could have all the stories in front of them before they received their ballots in the mail starting Friday, May 3.

All of our coverage is available online here.

Your ballot must be postmarked by election day, Tuesday, May 21, so it can be counted. You also can drop off your ballot up until 8 p.m. on election day at various sites around the county, including drop boxes at public libraries and at the main county elections office at 101 W. Main St. #201, Medford.

There’s still time to vote. Don’t miss your chance to participate.

Based on the way ballots are trickling in, Walker said Tuesday she expects a turnout rate of around 40%. We’ll have to wait and see.