When my Oregon primary election ballot arrived in the mail and I unfolded it, my first thought was: This won’t take long.
My second thought was whether to bother. But that stray idea passed quickly.
My ballot, slight as it is, does matter, and even when it’s not packed with critical inflection points, the decisions on it can have real impact.
I’m in the largest plurality of Oregon voters, those registered as not affiliated with any party. Since a lot of the interest in primary elections concerns choosing party nominees, especially for major parties, I’m a non-participant in a lot of the action this season.
That’s worth noting because 1.1 million Oregonians are in my boat, considerably more than the next-largest group, the Democrats, fewer than a million. Many registrants of the smaller parties have little role this season, either. State law bars all of those people from joining in critical partisan primary contests: You have to be registered with a party to obtain a ballot with those choices.
For unaffiliated voters, a ballot looks like this: Some local government races and some judicial seats, mostly uncontested, and occasionally a ballot issue. In Oregon, the highest-profile of those may be the bond ask for the Portland zoo.
In the case of the uncontested offices featuring only a single name – the norm for most judicial and many local government offices outside the metro areas – a voter can withhold support from a candidate but realistically has little chance of affecting the outcome. For many unaffiliated voters, ballot issues are the main reason to cast a vote at all.
Oregon is one of only nine states to limit primary participation, and citizens here have brought forth a number of proposals to open its primary elections to those not registered with a party.
Still, the group All Oregon Votes, which has backed open primaries in Oregon and filed an initiative proposal for the 2024 general election, said in February, it has “paused work on 2024 Initiative Petition 26 to focus on more promising strategies to enfranchise voters in Oregon.” Those other strategies weren’t specified. The group, which has been trying since 2020 to put a measure on the ballot, has run up against conflicts with state officials over ballot titles, which the group said left the intent of the measure unclear for voters.
Meanwhile, many major party members are seeing slim ballots, too. The presidential nominating process, which often drives primary turnout in presidential years, is effectively done – long before Oregon voters got a chance to weigh in. Only one Republican, Donald Trump, is even on the ballot, and the Democratic contest is just about over as well.
Two congressional districts do have heated primary contests, those being in the 3rd and the 5th districts, both on the Democratic side. The race in the 5th District does have serious national implications, because in the fall it may be among the handful determining whether the Republicans or Democrat will control the U.S. House next term.
And legislative primary contests are sprinkled all over the state. But for many voters, there’s still little there.
So why bother, especially for unaffiliated voters??
In my case, the ballot has several unopposed judicial races and several unopposed local offices – little to debate about there. But the main reason I wasted no time filling out and turning in the ballot was the one race on it which is contested.
This is a battle, a real political knock-down, for one of the three Yamhill County Commission seats. The incumbent seeking re-election is locally controversial enough to have been the subject, a few years back, of a recall attempt. She prevailed then, but not by much, 52.5% to 47.5%, and she hasn’t won office by much more than that.
Many commission races in Yamhill County in recent years have been similarly close. And this season’s contest, in which she has two challengers, may be another. One of those contenders hasn’t been seriously active, but the other has been running a highly energetic campaign, and local conventional wisdom is split on the probable outcome. As in many Oregon counties, the seats are officially non-partisan, but they party they belong to is an open secret.
In theory, it’s a race that could go down to a single vote. I wouldn’t want it to go what I consider to be the wrong way because I failed to vote.
Local Oregon ballots have lots of individual races like that, and they all matter. So, look closely at your ballot. It may offer more chances to make a difference than you initially think.
This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
Political contests in Idaho seem to be getting uglier with each passing year. The closing of the Republican primary in 2011 deserves a great deal of the blame. Extremist candidates found that they could win by brandishing fake culture war issues against traditional Republicans who were interested in solving problems. Stoking fear and outrage produces more votes than pledging to fix roads and schools in a low-turnout closed primary.