A6
THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, dEcEmbER 21, 2019
Voters: Those unaffiliated
are locked out of taking
part in the May primaries
continued from Page A1
“It did increase the amount of
nonaffiliated voters, when they
decided to opt in all the DMV
records,” County Clerk Tracie
Krevanko said.
Before the Motor Voter Act, the
county had fewer than 21,000 reg-
istered voters. The number swelled
to nearly 29,000 as of October.
Unaffiliated voters accounted
for nearly two-thirds of the growth,
their numbers more than doubling
from 5,120 in May 2015 to 10,335
in October. By comparison, the
county has 9,757 registered Dem-
ocrats and 6,780 Republicans.
Statewide, the 948,697 unaffil-
iated voters make up one-third of
the state’s 2.8 million registered
voters.
“I think it’s a major concern
of how to engage these” unaffili-
ated voters, said Andy Davis, the
chairman of the Clatsop County
Democratic Central Committee.
“Maybe you’re helping them to
get their foot in the door to become
involved in politics.”
Democrats send mailers out
during the run-up to elections to
let people know what’s going on,
Davis said, but Democrats and
Republicans prioritize registered
party members more likely to vote.
Brandon Williams, the vice
chairman of the Clatsop County
Republican Central Committee,
said Republicans try to contact
people any way they can, espe-
cially facing a Democratic super-
majority in Salem.
“The issues hit everybody,” he
said. “I think (it’s) just getting peo-
ple to understand that if they’re not
involved, someone else is going to
make the decision for you.”
Indivisible North Coast Ore-
gon, a progressive political group
that started in 2016 in reaction
to the election of Donald Trump
as president, is one of the main
organizations reaching out to the
region’s unaffiliated voters.
“I think we have an affinity for
nonaffiliated voters, because as an
organization we’re nonaffiliated,”
said Deb Vanasse, who works
with the group’s Vote the Future
team. “We just promote represen-
tative democracy and values like
freedom and the Constitution and
such.”
Vote the Future started reach-
ing out to voters in September
in advance of the 2020 election,
Vanasse said, trying to combat
both partisanship and voter apathy.
“It’s really important that if
you’re nonaffiliated, it’s a con-
scious choice, and you stay
informed about the issues,” she
said.
The state’s 948,000 unaffili-
ated voters are locked out of par-
ticipating in May primaries where
Republicans and Democrats
choose candidates. They can vote
in the nonpartisan elections on the
May ballot, like for county sheriff
or county commission.
Either major party can allow
unaffiliated voters to participate in
their primaries. Republicans did so
in 2012 for the secretary of state,
treasurer and attorney general
races. Delegates from the Clatsop
County Democrats unanimously
supported allowing in unaffiliated
voters, but the state Democratic
Party of Oregon voted to keep the
primary closed, Davis said.
“The Democrats that oppose
having
nonaffiliated
voters
involved think that being in the
primary is a perk of registering as a
Democrat and taking part in party
issues,” he said.
The Independent Party of Ore-
gon recently decided to open its
primary to unaffiliated voters.
“They’re the largest group of
voters and the most disenfran-
chised group of voters and they
deserve to be heard,” Sal Peralta,
the party’s secretary, told the Port-
land Tribune earlier this month.
The Independent Party’s pri-
mary will be in March, with bal-
lots delivered online. Oregon
allows candidates to be nominated
by multiple parties, giving more
weight to the Independent pri-
mary. More than 60 Democratic
and Republican legislators are
backed by the Independent Party,
Peralta said.
In Umatilla County, the
rise of the unaffiliated voter
By JADE McDOWELL
East Oregonian
When it comes to voting, Uma-
tilla County residents are a bit free
spirited.
Going into the most recent elec-
tion, 41.8% of them were not reg-
istered to any political party — the
second-highest unaffiliated rate in
the state.
Some of them were added to
the voter rolls as unaffiliated by
default after the Motor Voter Act
used information from the Depart-
ment of Motor Vehicles to automat-
ically register people to vote. But
others wear their unaffiliated label
proudly, as a conscious choice.
Tammy Knight, of Mission,
said she started out registered as a
Democrat.
“When I was growing up, my
dad told me that Democrats were
the working party and Republicans
were the rich people, so that’s what
I went with,” she said.
Over time, however, she saw
things she disliked happening in
both major political parties and
came to believe they were both cor-
rupt. So, she eventually switched to
having no political party, focusing
on individual candidates’ resumes
and positions instead. She has voted
for candidates on both sides of the
aisle.
“I like being the wild card, I
guess,” she said.
Dwayne Brown, of Hermiston,
has a similar story, except he started
out as a Republican after being
raised “very conservative.” He said
he still leans conservative, but got
“tired of politics in general.”
Overall, Brown said he likes
feeling flexible about how he votes
— he voted for Barack Obama for
president in 2008, for example, but
not 2012. He said the best way to
spur change is to focus on the best
candidates instead of automatically
voting by party.
“People either want to vote for
red or vote for blue or vote for the
best guy out there,” he said.
Half of Oregon’s 36 counties
now have more unaffiliated vot-
ers than voters with a single politi-
cal party, according to data from the
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Most of those counties are on the
west side of the state, but the three
that aren’t have the highest rates of
unaffiliated voters. Umatilla County
comes in second at 41.8%, Mor-
row County comes in third at 40.8%
and Malheur County has the high-
est unaffiliated rate in the state at
43.1%.
Wheeler County, which is major-
ity Republican, has the lowest num-
ber at 25.5%.
The most obvious reason for the
rise of the unaffiliated in Oregon is
the 2016 law that automatically reg-
isters people to vote when they get
or renew a driver’s license or state
ID. The newly registered voters get
sent a postcard asking if they want
to register as a member of a politi-
cal party, but a majority never send
it back.
The law helped increase Uma-
tilla County’s unaffiliated vot-
ers from 8,424 in October 2015
to 13,141 a year later, and in 2017
unaffiliated voters in the county
officially passed the number of reg-
istered Republicans. There are now
18,510 unaffiliated voters in the
county.
Unaffiliated voters had been on
the rise at a slower pace for several
years before that, however, match-
ing a nationwide increase. In 2018,
the Pew Research Center found that
37% of voters across the United
States were not registered with a
specific party, compared with 30%
in 1994.
Jeffery Dense, a political science
professor at Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity, said in an email many unaf-
filiated voters aren’t right down the
middle in their views. Pew Research
Center found about 80% tend to
lean toward one party or the other.
“While the rise of independent/
unaffiliated voters is interesting,
the real issue is the United States
has the lowest voter turnout rate of
any industrialized democracy in the
world,” Dense said. “If you don’t
vote, you don’t count.”
He said a state’s primary system
can have an effect on the number
of unaffiliated voters. Some states,
such as Washington and California,
have a primary system where the
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top two vote-getters from the prima-
ries advance, regardless of party. In
Oregon, unaffiliated voters are shut
out of the primary process for par-
tisan races, with Republicans and
Democrats each holding their own
contests open only to voters regis-
tered to their party.
Suni Danforth, chair of the Uma-
tilla County Republicans, said get-
ting to vote in the primaries should
be an incentive for people to regis-
ter to whatever party most closely
aligns with their views, even if they
don’t agree 100% with everything
that party does. That way, they can
help a candidate they like move on
to the general election.
“When you’re an unaffiliated
voter, that voice is mute,” she said.
If people want to change their
registration, she said, they can do
it online, but the best way is to fill
out a paper version by hand at the
county elections office. That way
the state can have the most current
version of their signature on file
to compare with their ballot sig-
nature, instead of one pulled from
their drivers license or other older
records.
Despite some of the benefits of
choosing a party, some unaffiliated
voters still see upsides to staying
independent. They say they get hit
up for donations to candidates and
causes less often, and are bothered
with fewer phone calls and mailers
during an election. And some peo-
ple just can’t bring themselves to
adopt a label when they have been
disappointed by actions on both
sides.
Delaney Clara switched to unaf-
filiated when she moved to Pend-
leton from Colorado. She said she
feels not labeling herself with one
party helps her be less biased when
considering new information, and
helps her keep in mind that “the
truth lies somewhere in the middle
of extremes.”
“The extremeness of both polit-
ical parties in Oregon was a huge
turnoff,” she said. “People seem to
just vote for people because they
identify as their party, even if (the
candidate’s) true values and inten-
tions don’t actually line up with
their own morals.”
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