Voter Turnout in Oregon

Bernie beat Hillary in Oregon 53-46

The hardest things to notice are the important things that did not happen, or the things that did happen that are so obvious that their importance is unnoticed.

National News focused on this

Bernie beat Hillary in Oregon, narrowly.    

This is important but not surprising.   Bernie campaigned here, with well attended rallies full of excited people and one mellow sparrow, an amazing omen of future victory.   Hillary essentially conceded Oregon so she could focus on Kentucky, which she won, barely, notwithstanding having said aloud the obvious truth which was that the era of coal is ending.  A gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells a truth people are unwilling to hear and Hillary's comment that she was going to work to replace coal jobs with new ones was a gaffe.

Voters feeling the Bern took time to vote at the bottom of the ballot

Local tax issues passed in my county--Jackson--in a purple part of a red region of a blue state.  A pleasant surprise--important but unnoticed by most--is that a Community College tax levy passed and a Transit District Operating Levy passed.   I attribute the YES vote to Bernie Sanders being on the ballot, but the actual precinct results will document this.   The Ashland college town liberal area of the county--the part that overwhelmingly votes YES on tax items for good things--had a reason to turn out.  While they were feeling the Bern they voted YES for buses and colleges.   Ashland people like government services and are willing to pay for them and when they turn out they make services like libraries possible.

The big surprise to me was turnout.  By American standards, turnout was high.

Re-elected judge.   Who cares?  Actually, I do.

There are about 2,300,000 eligible voters in Oregon, a number made higher by the fact that voter registration has always been easy in Oregon and it has now been made easier yet by making it automatic if a person is not registered and has some interaction with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

A little over 1,000,000 people voted in Oregon in this low key primary—about 44% of that relatively high number of registered voters.   This number is lower than it might have been because we have a closed primary system so if a voter is an Independent or Non-Party Affiliated voter (600,000 or 26%) most people would think there isn’t anything very exciting to vote for this primary election—a couple of local judge races and those tax levies.

For comparison, Oregon’s 44% turnout compares with 8.4% in the New York primary where pundits said the outcome was decisive in assuring eventual nominations for both Trump and Hillary, and 16% in Pennsylvania with the big controversy over uncommitted delegates, and 16% in Florida with the giant showdown between Trump and Rubio, 22% in Ohio where the vast forces of Stop Trump and homeboy Kasich battled the Trump tidal wave, and the national turnout leader New Hampshire at 28% where the eyes of the country focused for months and where presidential candidates had 50-150 appearances each, and the TV was saturated with ads.

Here is a chart.   Oregon would be a great outlier at 44%.   



Oregon was a sideshow.   We had one visit from Trump, 5 rallies by Sanders, 2 Town Halls by Kasich,  and one donor-only fundraiser from Hillary, a tiny fraction of the activity in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Ohio, and other states.  The presidential race was wrapped up for Trump, and Hillary had essentially conceded Oregon to Sanders so she could focus on Kentucky.  The incumbent Senator Wyden and Governor Brown were essentially unopposed.    I watch a lot of cable news to feed my own addictions and I have not seen an ad for Hillary or Bernie on TV.   

Oregon makes voting easy, not hard.   This is important and obvious, but not particularly noticed.    In Oregon one need not take a half day off work to stand in line, as is reported to be routine in Democratic areas of Miami-Dade in Florida and Cleveland, Ohio.   

Everyone in Oregon votes "absentee."   About 20 days before election day each voter receives a ballot in the mail at their address of record, a candidate and issue list and a stiff paper ballot sheet suitable to be run through a scanner machine, and a “secrecy envelope".   You fill in the ballot with black or blue pen coloring in the ovals.  You can take your time, read newspaper endorsements or the state issued Voters Pamphlet.

When done, you put your ballot into a "secrecy envelope" so the ballot is now anonymous.   One puts that secrecy envelope into the bigger envelope that has one’s name, address, precinct codes, etc. on it, and a place to sign.  You sign that outer envelope and mail it in with regular postage, or hand carry it to one of multiple official drop boxes in front of county library branches.   As ballots come in county elections people have time to compare signatures with the signature on file. 

It works well.   

My Oregon readers have reason to think this post is blindingly obvious, and they are right.  It is and example of those things that are so obvious their importance is unnoticed.  

Trump victory, among the 8.9% who voted.

The Oregon primary electorate is much different from the primary electorate in most other states.   It is broader and more representative of the general population.  The primary electorate base is important.  Trump won tremendous victories in the early state of Louisiana giving great momentum and credibility to his campaign.  Turnout was 8.9%.   Cruz was thought to have great voter appeal because he won in his home state of Texas, where turnout was 18.4%.   Those elections sampled the people who cared to vote, but it was a small subset of the state's people.  Would the vote have been different if it were easier to vote and had more people voted?  

Vote by mail means people with hourly jobs and no time off on a Tuesday get to vote just as easily as retired people.  Voting is more like paying a utility bill than it is going to the DMV to take a drivers test.  Oregon makes voting easy.  Most states make it hard.

Possibly Trump is exactly who represents the will of the GOP, and possibly Sanders and Clinton represent the expressed will of Democrats.   But in actual fact these candidates have been winnowed by a process in which only the very most motivated fraction of the two political parties have participated.   The system is "fair" in the sense that the rules are announced in advance.  But the results of the elections and caucuses express the will of a small group of people, the most motivated.

It is obvious, and important, and it needs to be noticed because it is shaping the choices Americans have for our next president.