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We have to give credit where credit is due. And some Oregonians have pulled off something politically remarkable.

There are more Oregonians registered as non-affiliated than registered as Democrats or Republicans.

There are some 996,276 Oregonians registered as Democrats.

There are 719,820 Oregonians registered as Republicans.

But the non-affiliated have the most with 1,080,057.

Those numbers are as of November 2023, provided courtesy of the Secretary of State’s Office.

Non-affiliated candidates don’t tend to win the big offices in Oregon. Democrats or Republicans win those.

It’s not that you have to be a Democrat or Republican to win.

It’s that the Democratic and Republican parties have it set up so to vote in the primaries that determine who will be their final candidates, you have to be a member of that party.

Oregon does make it easy to switch around your party affiliation, if you know how. But still, the closed primary system has effectively disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Oregon voters from important votes for years.

Oregon may switch to ranked choice voting if voters approve such a change in November 2024. But that would not open up Oregon primaries. They would remain closed. Oregon’s two political parties are effectively continuing to disenfranchise non-affiliated voters.