Anger, apathy won Oregon primary

09:38 AM PDT on Friday, May 19, 2006

Anger and apathy are the most common reasons experts are citing for the low turnout in this week's primary election.

Bill Kennemer, chairman of the Clackamas County commission, used those words to describe what he sees as a growing citizen disengagement since the 1980s. And Portland pollster Adam Davis, who has been surveying voters for almost 30 years, says he has never seen people as disconnected from public officials as they are now.

Dane Wells, 19, a Portland State University student, seemed to capture that mood when asked why he didn't vote: "If there had been anything I was interested in, I would have voted."

The turnout was 38 percent of Oregon's 2 million registered voters.

That's a better turnout than in the other states that have held primaries this spring, but low by Oregon standards. When official election results are finalized in a few weeks, it will go down as either the second- or third-lowest turnout in a statewide primary in more than 40 years.

A likely factor is the rise of the independent voter. Eighty percent of the state's 500,000 independent voters did not participate Tuesday, according to a survey of 16 county election offices conducted by The Oregonian newspaper.

Independents were not allowed to have their say in the Republican and Democratic races for governor, leaving them to decide lower profile and often uncontested races. There were also no statewide ballot measures to generate interest.

Former Secretary of State Phil Keisling sees the turnout as an opportunity to gather support for an open primary initiative he is trying to get on the November's ballot.

Under an open primary, all voters -- independents, Republicans, Democrats -- would get the same ballot, and the top two vote-getters in each race would advance.

"We're saying the definition of insanity is running the same experiment over and over again. And it's not just getting bad results. It's getting deteriorating results," Keisling said.

One county that bucked Tuesday's trend was Gilliam in Eastern Oregon. Almost 75 percent of registered voters there cast a ballot, the highest rate for any county in a primary in at least 20 years.

Those voters, however, had contested races for judge, sheriff and district attorney. And with a population of about 2,000, there's a strong chance that many voters knew the people in the race personally -- a reason for caring that voters in crowded counties do not enjoy.