Open Primary Initiative Craters

All Oregon Votes hoped to put the open-primary question on the November ballot but ran into a logjam of competing good-governance ideas.

Mailed ballots. (Chris Nesseth)
By Nigel Jaquiss

Oregon will for a while longer remain one of nine states in which voters unaffiliated with a major party are shut out of primary elections.

That’s the import of a Feb. 26 announcement by All Oregon Votes, the group that proposed Initiative Petition 26. It hoped to put the open-primary question on the November ballot but ran into a logjam of competing good-governance ideas.

“We are currently competing for attention with other pro-democracy reforms, such as campaign contribution limits, redistricting reform and ranked-choice voting,” the group said in a statement. “We believe we can attract more civic engagement as solutions to those and other reform issues emerge.”

Filings with the secretary of state show the campaign raised under $2,000, far less than the mid-six figures it would need to mount a serious signature gathering effort. All Oregon Votes also had a second political action committee, which raised an additional $65,289.

So for now, the 43% of Oregon voters who are neither Democrats nor Republicans will remain partially disenfranchised, while their partisan friends continue to vote in state-sponsored closed primaries.

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