COMMENTARY
Law treats independents as a party, reducing voters' options

BY RON EACHUS

April 24, 2006

If you're a registered Republican or Democrat, tired of unproductive petty political partisanship, disgruntled at the prospect of a Ted Kulongoski-vs.-Kevin Mannix rerun for governor and intrigued by the possibility of a viable independent candidate such as Ben Westlund, then you have a dilemma.

Under a new law, if you want to preserve your right to help get an independent on the ballot, you have two options in the upcoming primary election. You can change your registration to non-affiliated by April 25 (that's tomorrow!). Or you can not vote.

That's the perverse effect of the law passed by the 2005 Legislature. The public's discontent over the paralyzing effect of excessive partisanship and bickering was obvious to the Legislature.

But instead of opening up the process and retreating from the partisanship, they entrenched it. They circled the wagons and closed the loop by adopting unwarranted restrictions on voters' opportunities to determine the choices they have.

In House Bill 2614, the Legislature said that if you vote in the primary as a Republican or Democrat, you can't participate in another nominating process, and that includes signing a petition to put an independent candidate on the ballot.

Third-party or independent candidates in Oregon have usually been on the fringe with limited credibility. Westlund, though, comes with the credibility of experience and a reputation for crossing party lines.

The rancher from the Bend area has served as a Republican in the Legislature since 1997. In 2001, he co-chaired the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee, often at odds with his more conservative party leadership. He has changed his registration to run for governor as an independent representing what he calls the "radical middle."

He could give voters a viable alternative choice to the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees -- if he can get the 18,368 petition signatures required to get on the ballot.

It makes sense to prohibit someone who votes to determine the nominee of one party from being able to select a nominee of another party. What makes the new law wrong is that it extends to candidates not affiliated with any party.

There is no "Independent" party. When you register to vote, you may choose a political party or "not a member of a party." Of Oregon's 2.05 million registered voters, 22 percent are registered as nonaffiliated and can receive a nonpartisan ballot in a primary election.

Many of the 39 percent Democrats and 36 percent Republicans consider themselves as politically independent, but they have to vote in a primary with a partisan ballot. And here's the major problem with the law: The primary is in May, and the petitions for independent candidates aren't due until August.

A candidate can be nominated in the primary with a minority of support. In 2002, Mannix won the Republican primary with 37 percent of the vote. The process leaves many voters wishing they had other options in the general election.

Before the law, after the results of the primary elections were known, they still could sign a petition to put an independent candidate on the ballot. That option has now been taken away. Nonaffiliation with a political party is being treated as if it were a political party.

You can't solve the dilemma by voting in your party primary but not voting for governor because the Elections Office only can determine whether you voted in a party primary, not which offices or measures you voted on.

The issue isn't which candidate you support. It's about having a chance to give politics in Oregon a different look. Having to change parties or not vote is not the look voters were hoping for. Next session the Legislature should take another look at this law and repeal it.

Ron Eachus of Salem is a former legislator and a former chairman of the Oregon Public Utility Commission. His column appears every other Monday.