New Voters in Oregon Really Don't Want to Belong to a Party

And they really, really don't want to register as Republicans.

By Nigel Jaquiss

Oregon's motor voter program, which gives unregistered voters the opportunity to sign up more easily, has produced 68,583 new voters since it went into effect Jan. 1, 2016.

Figures released today, as Oregon secretary of state Jeanne Atkins embarks on a new round of registration, show some interesting choices.

First, just under 17 percent of the new voters elected to join a political party.

That's a remarkably low number: 78 percent of Oregon voters belong to a political party.

The second eye-catching statistic—and one that won't surprise Republicans, who vehemently opposed the motor voter legislation that passed in 2015—is that of the voters who do select a party, registrants are almost twice as likely to select the Democratic Party as they are to become Republicans: 6,085 chose to be Democrats and 3,405 have chosen to join the GOP.

Beginning today, Atkins will mail 145,000 voter-registration cards out to Oregonians who are eligible to vote but have not registered, based on DMV records from 2014 and 2015.

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