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Oregon makes it easy to vote fill out your ballot at home, then pop it in the mail, no stamp needed.

But Oregon voters dont get a say in which Democratic or Republican candidates get nominated for governor, Congress or the Legislature unless theyre a registered member of one of those parties. And right now, a huge chunk of Oregon voters about 41%, or nearly 1.3 million are not. (About 34% of registered voters are Democrats and 24% are Republicans.) Registering without a party affiliation has become much more common since Oregon adopted automatic voter registration tied to getting or renewing an Oregon driver license or state ID.

You might be among the 1.3 million who are not registered with a major party and its easy to check. Simply go to oregonvotes.gov/myvote. Enter your first and last names and birthday and youll see whether your registration is current and which party, if any, you belong to.

Many unaffiliated voters are perfectly content with that status. They get to vote in the May 17 primary for state labor commissioner, county commissioners, city council members and other non-partisan positions, such as auditor.

But elections officials say the top complaint about perceived election unfairness in spring primaries comes from voters who are certain they registered as members of the Republican or Democratic parties and are outraged someone changed their registration and took away their ability to vote for or against a major party candidate.

The Oregonian/OregonLive and state and county elections officials looked into many such complaints in 2020 and found no cases where a voters party registration was changed by anyone but the voter.

The upshot: If you want to vote for or against Tina Kotek, Bud Pierce or any other Republican or Democrat next month, you should act now. http://oregonvotes.gov/myvote and consider changing your party registration if youre not satisfied with the current one. All you need to switch your party membership online is your birthdate and Oregon driver license or state ID number to verify your identity. But you must do it by Tuesdays deadline to affect which ballot youll receive later this month.

-- Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@oregonian.com; @OregonianPol

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Want a say in who becomes the Democrat or Republican nominee for Oregon governor? Tuesday is the deadline to - OregonLive