EDITORIAL: A chance to reverse the trend of declining voter turnout

Published 8:22 am Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Hyperbole in the weeks leading to a presidential election is as certain as tamarack needles turning from green to orange.

Descriptions of the Nov. 5 election as the most meaningful in U.S. history, with American democracy at stake, are rife.

But exaggeration notwithstanding, this year’s contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris certainly has unusual aspects.

Trump is the first former president in more than a century to be a major party’s nominee for the office. The last ex-president to do so, Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, was the nominee of a new party, the Progressive Party, after he left the Republican Party.

Harris, the current vice president, was elevated to the top of the Democratic ticket this summer after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race.

Americans shouldn’t need the believe their country’s future is on the line, of course, to exercise their sacred right to vote.

Elections when the office of president is on the ballot typically lure the most voters.

But in Baker County, and in Oregon, voter turnout has mostly declined, albeit slightly, over the past few presidential elections.

This trend has happened even while the numbers of registered voters, in both the county and the state, have reached record highs.

In Baker County, slightly more than 13,000 residents will get ballots for the Nov. 5 election. That tops the 2020 general election, which held the record with about 12,450 registered voters.

But voter turnout in the county for the 2020 and 2016 general elections was lower than in 2012. Turnout was 79.8% in 2020, 79.5% in 2016 and 82.8% in 2012.

Statewide numbers were similar, with a turnout of 78.5% in 2020, 80.3% in 2016 and 82.8% in 2012.

Both trends are driven by Oregon’s “motor voter law.” That law, which took effect Jan. 1, 2016, automatically registers people as voters after they visit a DMV office to get or renew a driver’s license, unless the person, in responding to a notice from the state, declines to be registered.

Newly franchised voters can register with a political party, but if they don’t do so they are automatically registered as nonaffiliated voters.

Statistics from the Oregon Elections Division show that most people registered under the motor voter law are nonaffiliated.

Those voters are much less likely to fill out their ballots than voters who register with a party. This is hardly surprising, of course, given that these people were registered not because they took action but because they did not.

In Baker County, nonaffiliated voters prior to the motor voter law — when they still had to choose to register and to select the nonaffiliated status rather than having that decision made for them — were more likely to vote in presidential elections.

In the 2012 election, turnout among nonaffiliated voters in Baker County was 69%. In 2016, when almost 1,000 county residents were registered through motor voter, almost all of whom were automatically designated as nonaffiliated, turnout among that group of voters dipped to 57.9%.

Turnout was much higher in that election among both registered Republicans (91.4%) and registered Democrats (85.1%) in Baker County.

It would be gratifying to see the voter turnout trend reverse itself this November. That would make the record growth in the county’s voter rolls more meaningful than a mere statistic.

Voters who were registered through the motor voter law should open their ballot envelope — the county clerk’s office will be mailing ballots Oct. 16 — and at least consider exercising their right to help determine the country’s future.

Residents who aren’t registered still have time to do so — the deadline to register for the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 15.

They can register online at secure.sos.state.or.us/orestar/vr/register.do, or by visiting the county clerk’s office in the Baker County Courthouse, 1995 Third St.