Betsy Johnson, the unaffiliated candidate for Oregon governor, spent two decades as a Democrat in the Legislature and even longer as a powerful presence in local politics.

Betsy Johnson, a pro-gun, woke-bashing former Democrat is waging a strong bid for governor.

Nonaffiliated voters in Oregon comprise the biggest voting bloc but that doesn't mean that they are nonpartisan.

If the two parties go off to the edges, there’ll be a ticket running up the center.

Betsy Johnson paid a Washington-based signature gathering firm more than $200,000 to collect signatures for her campaign.

At unpublicized meetings in May, June and July, members of the party’s steering committee nominated candidates for Congress, governor and the Legislature

Former State Sen. Betsy Johnson is running for governor and Aumsville Mayor Derek Clevenger is running for state representative without a party.

The number of voters who aren't affiliated with a political party continue to swell in Oregon. But when it comes to the May 17 primary, they are out of luck.

Nonaffiliated voters are now the largest voting bloc in Oregon, but they can't pick candidates in most primaries.

Although the U.S. political party affiliation average for 2021 was similar to prior years, the country shifted from a nine-point Democratic preference early in the year to a five-point Republican advantage near the end.

Despite Oregon's reputation as a state that values voter access, one third of its registered voters are barred from participating in the state's Democratic and Republican primaries, The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board writes. A proposal to copy Colorado's system, as suggested by former Secretary of State Phil Keisling, offers an elegant and effective way to enfranchise Oregon's one million nonaffiliated voters.

Heard is one of three current or former Republican state senators who swept into party leadership after a vote Saturday.

An unusually large number of voters have disavowed their Republican party identities over the past 2 months, particularly in Washington County, where the number of Republicans fell by nearly 1,900, or 2.3%

Oregon led the pack for a time in terms of innovations to help people participate in elections, write David Ellis and Jeremy Gruber. its refusal to open the Democratic and Republican primaries to non-affiliated voters, however, lags far behind other states that have embraced open primaries.

In one key way, Oregon lags other states in making voting easy. Its closed primary system locks out hundreds of thousands of non-affiliated voters who now make up one-third of Oregon's registrants. Oregonians should keep up the pressure on the parties to open their primaries and on the secretary of state candidates to also make this a central part of their platform.

Non-affiliated Oregon voters requested 97 percent fewer ballots for the Independent Party of Oregon's primary election this year compared with 2016. Source: Far fewer non-affiliated Oregon voters participating in Independent primary

With potentially hundreds of thousands of California voters under the mistaken belief that they are registered as independent from partisan affiliation, newly drafted state legislation could end the confusion by forcing one minor political party to change its name.

After serving three terms as a Republican, former state Rep. Jim Thompson says he is looking at running for his old House seat as an Independent.

Political parties and open primaries are the electoral equivalent of oil and water.