Thursday, May 18, 2006
In case you missed it -- and odds are you did -- Oregon just held an election where voter burnout defeated voter turnout by nearly a 2-to-1 margin.
And it could have been worse. Turnout had all the endorsements and all the TV ads.
Yet burnout won going away.
The Oregon Elections Division reported Wednesday that voter turnout had crept from 32 percent up to 38 percent, not a low record, but still one of the worst turnouts in state history. Never mind that all it takes to vote in Oregon's mail elections is a few minutes, a 39-cent stamp and a reason to care.
It's that last thing that's gone missing. Thousands of people who voted in the 2002 primary sat out this one. Who can blame them? This state, its major parties and its leading candidates did not give Oregonians enough reason to vote.
To make matters worse, Oregon has two laws on its books that actively dissuade people from voting. One is the double-majority law, which encourages opponents of tax measures to not vote and deny schools and local governments a required 50-percent turnout.
The other prevents anyone who votes in a party primary from signing a petition to place an independent candidate, such as Ben Westlund, on the ballot. Wednesday, a 58-year-old man sent a note to The Oregonian saying that he had never missed voting in an election, but chose not to vote Tuesday so he could sign Westlund's petition. "The Democrats and Republicans stole my vote and my freedom of speech," he wrote.
Those anti-voter laws ought to be repealed, but that alone would have little effect on turnout. The central issue is disillusionment with the candidates, the parties and government institutions. Ask people why they don't vote, and generally the answer is some variation of this: "I don't think it would make any difference."
You could see how Oregonians would feel that way. The candidates were depressingly familiar -- it's hard to remember a ballot that didn't start with the names Kulongoski, Mannix or Saxton. Then the campaigns were so nasty they made you want to snap your No. 2 pencil in half and turn away.
Too, Oregon keeps clinging to a partisan primary system even as more and more Oregonians vote with their feet and register as independents, rather than Democrats or Republicans. Oregon just held a primary election that had the effect of deliberately excluding 450,000 independent voters.
A signature-gathering campaign is under way to present Oregonians in the November election with a plan for an open primary system, in which all candidates would appear on the same primary ballot, and all voters would receive the same ballot. The top two vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, would advance to appear on the general election ballot. An open primary is a good idea, and we encourage Oregonians to support it.
The major parties strongly oppose open primaries. Party leaders argue that Oregon's election system, with all its flaws, is good enough. Some point to the appalling turnout in other states -- 10 percent in Texas' last primary election; 13 percent in North Carolina's -- and suggest that Oregon ought to be happy with its own turnout.
Yet Oregon has a long history of strong voter participation. It is justifiably proud of its democratic innovations, including voting by mail. This state, of all places, must never concede to voter burnout.
