Tuesday's Primaries

Bernie just can't get over the hump. What a joke of an election year we're going to have.

 



    

A whopping 111,000 Oregonians gave themselves a say in the upcoming presidential primary by changing their voter registrations to Democrat or Republican.

That figure dwarfs registration change numbers during President Barack Obama's 2008 primary campaign more than threefold.

The bulk of these voters — who previously weren't registered with either party and wouldn't have been able to cast a presidential ballot this month — made the switch in the weeks before the April 26 primary deadline, when excitement was building over the state's potentially key role in deciding the nominees.

[...]

Of the 111,000 voters who joined the two major parties this year — more than three-quarters of whom were previously nonaffiliated — the biggest chunk, about 84,800, went to Democrats.

[...]

Additionally, 100,900 new Oregon voters were added to the rolls this year through April — up 42 percent from the same time in 2008, when primary turnout was the highest since then 1970s — and nearly half registered with the two major parties, but mostly Democrats.

  Oregon Live

Still, too little, too late.

Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins estimates a new "motor voter" law — which automatically signs up drivers to vote when they get a new or renewed license — resulted in half of those new registrations.

And that's the kind of thing every state should have to register voters. We can have mandatory automatic registration of 18-year-old males in order to use them for military purposes, but we can't have automatic registration of citizens for purposes of a democracy?