Election 2014: Oregon Ballot Measure 90

Ballot Measure 90 is intended to rectify a growing inequity in Oregon primary elections . . . but it exacts too great a price.

Oregon has a closed primary system, which means voters can only vote for candidates in the political party for which they are registered: Democrats vote for Democrats, Republicans for Republicans.

This is a relic of elections in centuries past, when parties chose their candidates in private meetings before they were presented to the voters. Due to pressure from the general electorate and the courts, that morphed into closed primary elections in which Democrats and Republicans select their respective candidates for the general election.

The idea is that constitutionally guaranteed “free associations” of Americans could affiliate, meet, agree on what they wanted, etc.

But over the past few decades, more and more voters have registered as Independent or non-party affiliated. I’ve seen various figures for the number, but it’s definitely more than half a million Oregonians now.

In a state that has only 2.2 million registered voters, that’s a massive swing potential. If the Supreme Court represented all Oregon voters, Independents would be more than the single Arthur Kennedy swing vote; they’d be two or three justices capable of swaying a decision to the left or right.

Last week, the Oregonian reported that the number of nonaffiliated voters -- that is, those registered as Independent or one of the other minor parties -- has reached a record 32.1 percent of all registered voters. As of this year, they outnumber Republicans, which total just 29.9 percent of Oregon voters now.

Nonaffiliated voters are effectively shut out of primary elections. Having already expressed their lack of interest in, if not outright disgust for, the major parties, such voters are allowed to vote only in general elections. This is an utter inequity that involves a kind of taxation without representation, since the state pays for our mail-in primary elections.

Oregon has spent between eight and nine million dollars for each of the past three primaries. Independents and nonaffiliated voters are helping to pay for elections they are not allowed to vote in. It’s only fair to let them back into the process. Endorsements of Measure 90 by the conservative-moderate columnist Elizabeth Hovde, the Oregonian editorial board, and many others have emphasized this point.

But here’s the catch: Ballot Measure 90 would allow only the top two vote-getters in the primary to advance to the general election. In theory, this means we could all end up voting between two Democrats, two Republicans, a Republican and a Democrat, either and a third-party candidate, or two minor-party candidates, in November.

But in practice, we all know only the first three options will be the result. Despite the major parties’ staunch opposition to Measure 90, the top-two, winners-take-all approach will effectively shut third parties out of the general election. And here are the reasons that will be the case: incumbency, name recognition, and big money backing.

What’s really happening here is that the major parties will eliminate the “spoiler” effect from general elections, in which an attractive third-party candidate draws off a chunk of voters from one of the major-party candidates so that the “lesser” one (in terms of general voter ideology) ends up winning.

That in itself might not be such a bad thing -- the Oregonian profiled five state races in which a third-party “spoiler” might have changed the results of a statewide election -- but it does mean that ever-larger amounts of money will be spent to push the major party candidates in both the primary and general elections, I believe.

Among candidates, party regulars and incumbents will stick with party affiliation (because those tend to draw the largest union and PAC donations), and newcomers to politics are more likely to adopt one or the other instead of attempting to run for office from the outside with a third party label. That’s despite the fact that at least a third of Oregon voters don’t care to affiliate with either party.

It’s funny to me that the Oregon Democratic and Republican parties are both fighting Measure 90, since I cannot see how it would possibly weaken them. Sure, the odds of a “spoiler” effect shifting to the primaries might increase: more candidates claiming to be a Democrat or Republican might draw votes away from the party favorites, or a third-party celebrity could pick up substantial money and nonaffiliated votes.

But I don’t see this ultimately hurting the major parties very much. It takes name recognition (best acquired through past political experience), money, and powerful friends to run a credible race. By and large, potential spoilers lack one or more of these. Despite fears of crossover voting and strategic voting, I think parties tend to think more strategically than individual voters do.

The interesting question is whether a celebrity candidate who chooses to run as a third-party candidate and attracts significant outside funding could possibly beat party insiders and incumbents, the way former Trail Blazers center-turned-businessman Chris Dudley nearly did (but only as a GOP challenger) against our current governor, John Kitzhaber, in 2010.

I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt it. When push comes to shove, most voters tend to opt for political experience and party affiliation. And I trust most Independent voters to vote in their (and everybody’s) best interests rather than trying to waste, spoil, or indulge in strategic voting for a weak candidate in the primary to knock out a stronger, better one they don’t like.

(We might call this the “Survivor” approach, popularized in many reality TV contests: ganging up to knock out the stronger, more deserving opponent as soon as you can no longer ride on his or her coattails, relatively early in the contest, so the weaker one(s) will present less of a challenge when you get close to the climax.)

Measure 90 has one or two good points. For one thing, it would allow a major-party candidate to list endorsements by third parties, and therefore give voters a better sense of where two different major-party candidates might stand in relation to each other.

But, as with Measure 92, it’s instructive to follow the money. You have to ask yourself why a Texas billionaire and former Enron employee, and a New York billionaire, have each poured more than a million dollars into the campaign in support of Oregon ballot measure 90.

I think nearly all of us agree that every Oregonian should enjoy the opportunity to participate in statewide primary elections, rather than having to pay tax dollars to support races that limit their choices in November.

But Measure 90 is not the solution to this problem. I like the idea of instant-runoff voting, but it only seems to be workable at a small, local level. If there were some way to make it work in statewide contests (assigning numbered preferences to a multiple slate of candidates and weighting those assignments?) without running into a huge expense, that would seem to be the best way to electing the most representative officeholders.

The much bigger problem in American elections is the role of big corporate and wealthy Americans’ dollars, and media advertising, in the process. So far, we aren’t addressing that.