Skip to main contentOn Monday, May 6, at 8 pm, what promises to be the least conventional and most youthful gubernatorial debate of the year--complete with beer--will take place inside the 600-seat Aladdin Theater.
But despite the promise of a full house of attentive young voters, at least two would-be Oregon governors--Jack Roberts and Kevin Mannix--are planning to skip the "Jabbin' at the Aladdin" event entirely.
Shameful? Hardly. According to a new study, the candidate who snubs young voters this spring has just passed an intelligence test. That's because in the May primary a huge portion of young voters--about 100,000 of them in greater Portland alone--will not be allowed to vote for Oregon's next governor.
Although these voters are legally registered, they've spurned both major parties, opting instead to sign up as either third-party members or independents. Oregon, like most states, has a closed primary, so these voters cannot vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries (though they can vote in nonpartisan contests, such as the City Council races and the handful of ballot measures).
A study by X-PAC, a nonpartisan group dedicated to increasing young voter participation, shows that party affiliation is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The proportion of unaffiliated young voters is huge and growing, reaching 43 percent in the Portland region.
X-PACers say Oregon's closed primary is partly to blame for low voter turnout. X-PAC member Marshall Runkel calls it "a conspiracy of circumstance" that results in young people being "almost systematically ignored."
The inability of many young people to vote, the X-PACers argue, is why you rarely see candidates on the college-campus circuit, pushing issues of interest to young voters. X-PACer Tomi Douglas says the closed primary "says to people under 40, 'We're not interested in hearing from you.'"
In California, where voters opened up the primaries in 1996, voter participation jumped 23 percent, reversing decades of decline. Both the Democratic and Republican parties sued, claiming it violated their constitutional right to freedom of assembly--and last year the U.S. Supreme Court agreed.
Most political analysts, however, say the real story is that "independent voters" are synonymous with people unlikely to vote. An open primary "is not something that will solve the youth participation problem," says Curtis Gans of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.
What's indisputable is that voter turnout makes a difference. Four years ago, an X-PAC study found that a city ballot measure to fund park improvements would have passed if just 2 percent more 18- to 34-year-olds had voted. In this election, ballot measures for schools, parks and libraries can't pass unless at least 50 percent of eligible voters turn out.
X-PAC is asking candidates for a symbolic commitment, to devote at least 1 percent of their campaign spending toward young-voter outreach.
"That can't hurt," says Gans, "but directing the campaign to young voters does not mean pandering to 'youth issues.'" Instead, he adds, the real problem that people are spending more time with televisions and computers than with other human beings.
"The one statement that I wholeheartedly agree with that John McCain made in 2000," says Gans, "was that politics needs to be about something larger than the self."
WWeek 2015