THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2021 A5
Oregon wineries seek to boost
direct-to-consumer shipping limit
BY MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Oregon wineries could in-
crease the amount of wine they
send directly to consumers un-
der a bill that’s intended to help
offset lost tasting room visitors.
The state’s wine industry is
calling on lawmakers to pass
Senate Bill 406, which would
allow them to ship five cases of
wine per resident a month, up
Postmarks
Continued from A1
“We’ve all seen it every elec-
tion cycle,” Fagan said at a
hearing. “The news media, the
county clerks, the secretary of
state’s office, people in orga-
nizations, various people just
guessing have to constantly es-
timate when is the unofficial
last day to mail your ballot. It
just creates confusion typically
on those last five days before
an election.”
Rep. Dan Rayfield, D-Cor-
vallis, the chief sponsor of HB
2687, said 130 voters in Mar-
ion County alone cast ballots
that did not count because they
were received after the Nov. 3
election.
“That is what this bill is try-
ing to solve,” he said.
Under Oregon law, ballots
are mailed to voters 14 to 18
days before the election date.
Because of uncertainties raised
about the reliability of the U.S.
Postal Service — although
USPS said in a year-end re-
port it delivered 99.89% of
mail from voters to elections
officials on time — more than
the usual number of voters re-
turned their ballots early.
“We can and do encourage
people to vote early,” Isabela
Villareal, who spoke for the
Next Up Action Project, said.
“But that really does not solve
the problem.
“We know of Oregonians
who become nonvoters and do
not cast their ballots,” Villareal,
from the current limit of two
cases.
More than 30 years have
passed since Oregon created
its “direct-to-consumer” wine
shipping law and it’s due for an
update due to restrictions as-
sociated with the coronavirus,
according to proponents.
“With the pandemic, we are
unfortunately seeing a lot of
these wine tasting rooms being
shuttered because they cannot
carry out wine tastings” under
mandates aimed at limiting
the spread of illness, said Sen.
Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene,
the bill’s chief sponsor, during a
recent legislative hearing.
The stakeholders in Oregon’s
wine industry have negotiated
a cap of five cases and aren’t
seeking unlimited shipping,
he said.
who spoke for the former Bus
Project, said. “They think they
are too late to mail their bal-
lots. and dropping off their bal-
lots is a barrier due to mobility,
transportation, lack of available
drop-off locations, and confu-
sion over mailing deadlines.”
Among the organizations
endorsing HB 2687 were the
League of Women Voters of
Oregon and the Asian Pacific
American Network of Oregon.
Although she did not tes-
tify at the hearing, Gov. Kate
Brown — herself a former
secretary of state — identified
election-day postmarks in her
state of the state address as one
of her three priorities to ex-
pand access to voting.
The others are election-day
voter registration, which is
proposed in House Joint Reso-
lution 11, and use of informa-
tion from agencies other than
the Driver and Motor Vehicle
Services Division to register
voters automatically. Many Or-
egonians do not drive or own
cars. (That bill was not up for a
hearing.)
House Joint Resolution 11,
which requires a statewide
election, would amend the Or-
egon Constitution to remove
the 20-day deadline that voters
put there in 1986. They did so
after the attempted Rajneeshee
takeover in Wasco County, al-
though county and state offi-
cials managed to thwart irregu-
lar voter registrations.
Oregon had election-day
voter registration from 1977
to 1985, when lawmakers
changed the deadline to the
day before an election.
Also heard by the commit-
tee in addition to election-day
postmarks and the constitu-
tional change was House Bill
2679, which would allow some
17-year-olds to vote in party
primaries if they turn 18 by the
general election and if the po-
litical party they affiliate with
allows them to do so by rule.
Rep, Jack Zika, R-Redmond,
asked what would happen to
election timelines if the Legis-
lature allows for election-day
postmarked ballots to count.
Zika won his 2018 primary by
just two votes of around 7,500
cast. Rayfield said he would
propose a technical amend-
ment to his bill to adjust the
timelines.
Yamhill County Clerk Brian
Van Bergen, speaking for non-
partisan county elections of-
ficials, expressed reservations
about the proposed changes.
Democrats command super-
majorities in both chambers,
so they can pass them with-
out Republican votes. They
can only refer a constitutional
change to voters, however.
“We don’t think the system is
broken,” Van Bergen said in re-
sponse to a question by House
Republican Leader Christine
Drazan of Canby, who sits on
the House Rules Committee.
“We think there are opportuni-
ties for improvement.”
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5 common website design pitfalls to avoid
BY LIAM O’KENNEDY
Digital Adversing
and Content Strategist
A well-designed website is
the digital foundation of any
successful business.
When a company’s website is
easy to find, quick to load and
seamless to navigate, strang-
ers can transform into brand
loyalists in just a few clicks.
Unfortunately, the journey
from search engine query
to shopping cart checkout is
fraught with hidden pitfalls
that can turn back would-be
customers and leave them with
a lasting bad impression.
If a website looks good but
takes forever to load, or loads
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ing, the quality of the product
or service being offered is
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will simply click back to the
search page and choose anoth-
er option.
Read on to learn more about
five of the most common
website design mistakes.
1. WEAK SEO
Search engine optimiza-
tion, or SEO, is all about
cooperating with the complex
algorithms that control search
engines. In order to appear
at or near the top of search
results that pertain to what a
business offers, that business’
website must be an accurate
reflection of the search terms
that were used.
If it isn’t, Google will relegate
it to the Great Beyond, aka
Page 2, where websites lan-
guish in obscurity.
A rock solid SEO strategy
translates to a higher position
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drawing more website visitors
that can be converted into
customers.
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Generating clicks to a web-
site is just the first step in the
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As soon as that click occurs,
visitors expect lightning-fast
123rf
load times. The longer a page
takes to load, the higher a
website’s bounce rate will be.
Bounce rates describe how
often a user leaves a website
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indicator of a website’s overall
health.
Fast load times have become
so crucial that 40% of people
abandon a website that takes
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factor in load times when
determining how to rank a site
on the search results page.
3. NOT OPTIMIZING
FOR MOBILE
A killer SEO strategy and
fast load times don’t mean a
thing if a website is impos-
sible to read and navigate.
When a mobile user visits a
site designed only for desktop
computers, that’s exactly what
they’ll experience.
Since more than half of
Internet traffic now comes
from mobile devices, business
owners who haven’t imple-
mented responsive web design
can expect sky-high bounce
rates.
4. BAD DESIGN
Gone are the days when
a website could use generic
stock photos and Papyrus as a
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ly. Our collective understand-
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dawn of the Internet. Even on
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5. LACKING A CLEAR
CALL-TO-ACTION
A well-built website should
be easy to find, load quickly on
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enter achieves those metrics, a
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