Final days to pick a political party for May ballot

Are you sure that you’ve chosen your political party for the upcoming May 17 primary election ballot? Or that you’re registered to vote, at all?

A public announcement from Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne P. Atkins reminds residents about new “tools” on the department’s website to help voters check their registration status.

The deadline to register in time to vote in the May 17 election is this Tuesday, April 26.

Any adult age 17 or older may register (ballots are mailed only to those who are 18 by election day), and anyone may change their political party affiliation, by Tuesday.

Oregon residents may register online at oregonvotes.gov/myvote and check their voting status anytime.

They may choose to register with a minor party or to become a non-affiliated voter – but these voters will receive ballots that include local ballot measures (such as the MHCC general obligation bond measure) and nonpartisan races, and not the major primary races for U.S. president or Oregon governor this year.

In other words, tens of thousands of current Oregon voters who are registered as Independent Party or non-affiliated are unable to vote for, say, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton et al. in next month’s election.

Unlike some states, Oregon does not allow “crossover” voting in its primary elections.

Across Oregon, as of March, some 633,000 voters were registered as Independent Party or non-affiliated voters – more than 1 in every 4 voters statewide. In Multnomah County alone, there were 126,000 voters in these two categories.

Another convenient way for new voters to register is the Oregon Motor Voter card, received by anyone who gets a new drivers license from the Oregon Motor Vehicles department.

Since the Motor Voter program began on Jan. 1, it has added 34,410 new voters to the voter roll. That’s nearly 9,000 new voters per month, on average, compared to an average number of 2,000 new registered voters each month previously.

However, according to the Oregon Motor Voter statistics, 76 percent of about 160,000 of qualified new voters didn’t return the card that was given to them, specifying a political party. That 76 percent were automatically registered as non-affiliated voters, as a result.

Student leaders at MHCC are busy this spring trying to encourage students to register to vote.

“The importance of voting is to ensure that what the people, us – what we want is done,” said Seth Albert, Associated Student Government president.

Some people at Mt. Hood still haven’t registered to vote in the upcoming May ballot.

“I’m honestly surprised about that,” said Albert. “I don’t know why I’m surprised about it, but it is a little surprising to go up to someone and (ask them if they’ve voted or not and they haven’t). They don’t have a reason not to, so I wonder why they didn’t do it in the first place.”

The Oregon Student Association (OSA) is working with community colleges to get Oregon students to register to vote. Albert said a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to register and don’t know how to, so it leads to the help of the “Vote OR Vote” drive.

ASG has been working together to get their own staff trained, conducting class visits, canvassing, and making phone calls. “I imagine we’re about 60-70 percent to our goal, which is 700 (Mt. Hood students) for this term,” said Albert.