Just one day after the Every Oregon Voter Counts Petition Committee set a new record in Oregon for the fastest signature gathering effort to open every election to every voter in Oregon, a bi-partisan group released a report that touts open primaries as one way to ease the partisanship plaguing the nation’s politics at every level of government. It’s a positive outcome that Oregonians will have a chance to vote on this fall (this is the second time in six years we have dealt with this issue).
Opening up primaries so that everyone can vote, not just registered Democrats voting for Democrat candidates and registered Republicans voting for Republican candidates, should increase voter participation allowing independents and members of other parties to vote in partisan primaries.
According the USA Today, a 109-page report was created by a bipartisan group that includes former Senate majority leaders, cabinet secretaries, governors, White House officials and others and is a substantive list of ideas that the group contends could “ease the friction that has contributed to fiscal cliffs, government shutdowns and a record low public approval rating for Congress.”
The proposed ballot measure here in Oregon would replace Democrat and Republican party primaries with a single primary election open to all voters, regardless of party affiliation, including independents. All candidates, regardless of party, would appear on the May primary ballot and the top two would advance to the general election — again, regardless of party. Whoever is in the top two — even if one candidate gets over 50 percent — would advance to the November election. This also means that two Republicans or two Democrats could face off in the general election. There’s no guarantee that the top two vote getters would come from different parties with different ideologies.
This change in the electoral process would apply to all currently partisan local and state races. This includes all 90 Oregon legislative races; four statewide offices (governor, attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state), U.S. Senate and congressional elections and some county elections still held on a partisan basis. Due to federal law, this does not apply to the Presidential primary.
Washington state voters approved the use of a similar open primary system beginning in 2008, and California voters adopted the open primary system beginning in 2012.
There clearly are issues that come up with this proposal including the possibility of same party affiliations running against each other twice, even if someone has 60 percent of the vote there’s still a general election and of course the power of money that can influence these races.
However, the most important point of all of this is that the current process does not work leading to both partisan fighting and voters left out of the process. So I say go for it….get rid of the flawed partisan primary process we have now.
