The following editorial ran Nov. 2 in the Corvallis Gazette-Times:
It's one of the more compelling questions in what has become a compelling election season: Will Oregon's mass of new voters, some 250,000 strong, affect any of the races?
We won't know the answers for sure until political scientists and other researchers sift through the data from this and future elections. But it's fun to speculate.
Oregon's voting ranks have swelled thanks to the state's adoption of a "motor voter" program in which voters are automatically registered when they get or renew their driver's licenses. The program kicked in at the start of the year; since then, it has registered some 250,000 voters.
Numerically, that could represent a substantial bloc, considering that the Secretary of State's office reported at the end of last month that about 2.5 million Oregonians were registered to vote.
That means roughly 10 percent of the state's registered voters came from the motor voter program.
Here's the part of all this that has prompted considerable head-scratching among the state's political pundits: Since it was easy to register to vote in Oregon even before the adoption of the motor voter program, these new voters likely are not particularly political, so they may not be particularly motivated to return their ballots.
At least one thing is certain. They are not, by and large, interested in affiliating with any particular political party.
In fact, nearly 90 percent of the new voters have chosen not to declare a party affiliation.
That means that these voters likely didn't have much impact on May's primary elections, since only voters who announced a party preference got ballots for that party's primary. The remainder received the very short ballot that goes to nonaffiliated voters.
The Nov. 8 general election might well be a different story, especially in races that appear to be going down to the wire.
Although, again, no one knows this for certain, there are signs that these new voters are younger (half of them have turned out be younger than 35, according to a recent story in The Oregonian) and might skew left.
If that's the case, those voters could give a boost to candidates such as Brad Avakian, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state, who's locked in a tight battle with Republican Dennis Richardson.
And these new voters could provide the decisive votes on state ballot measures such as 97, the controversial proposal for a tax on the sales of certain Oregon corporations, and 99, which would allocate a percentage of state lottery funds to help expand Outdoor School offerings.
But there's a big "if" that goes along with that speculation. It presumes that these new, younger voters are paying attention to races other than the presidential campaign. The Oregonian's story talked to one such voter, who shared his plan to write in the name of Bernie Sanders for president but hadn't been following any of his state or local races.
This is the sort of thing that causes experienced political operatives to pull out their remaining hair: a potentially rich bloc of voters that could prove to be decisive in state politics — if anyone knew for sure how to reach out and engage them.
We were happy to see the state enact the motor voter program. How — or even if — these voters will shape the political landscape in Oregon is an open question. But you can bet plenty of politicos will be searching for answers in the November returns.
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