The latest word from John Kauffman, Multnomah County’s elections director, isn’t improving my mood about this Tuesday’s final turnout.

“Based on what we’ve seen so far, we’ll be lucky if we hit 20 percent,” he told me. His specific prediction is 19 percent, based on previous turnout numbers. That’s about average with off-year special elections (for, say, school board races), “but I thought the City of Portland’s charter change measures would have brought in more voters.”

Guess not.

“You never know, though,” Kauffman continued, “there could be a big push by the charter campaigns this weekend, and there could be a surge in the last couple of days.”

Not holding my breath.

Still, it’s better than it was before vote by mail. “I remember special elections years ago [before 2000] where some precincts had turnouts in the single digits. It doesn’t feel great to say that 20 percent is a pretty good turnout, but it could be worse.”

Full disclosure: I haven’t turned in my ballot yet, because I don’t want to be taken off of campaign mailer/phone call rolls, in case something interesting comes in that I should report about. I’m hand-delivering mine Monday afternoon.