The Independent Party of Oregon, having conducted its online voting among members (just eyeballing it, maybe around 5% of the membership took part), and the results are in.

It’s an eclectic group they voted for. Whatever else you say about it, this is clearly not a group in the pocket of any one political party.

A few thoughts on the results released this evening online.

If the biggest vote-getter was “none of the above,” does that mean no endorsement in that race? There were a bunch of those. In state House 22, incumbent Democrat Betty Komp and “none of the above” each got 12 votes.

The endorsement for governor clearly went to Democrat John Kitzhaber, but a little context is necessary too. Republican Chris Dudley didn’t seek the nomination, so his name wasn’t listed. So: Kitzhaber got 850 votes, but two little-knowns, Jerry Wilson and Richard Esterman, got a total of 738. Were some of those de facto Dudley votes?

In the 4th congressional district, Republican Art Robinson, who’s probably a longshot against incumbent Democrat Peter DeFazio, got most of the votes – 418 to 288. And in the 5th, Republican challenger Scott Bruun took 237 votes to incumbent Democrat Kurt Schrader‘s 211, in a race that could be close indeed.

The legislative races were a deeply split mix. Hard to imagine what single mindset would come up with results like this. (Not an argument that any particular results are irrational, just that some of them seem to run up against some others.) If the original concern was that the process might be rigged, the actual results seem to fly in the face of that idea.