Back to the future - dump the party primary.

Russell Sadler contends that Oregonians should learn from California and change the way that we run elections.

With Ben Westlund’s withdrawal from the governor’s race, Oregonians are getting another feckless, unproductive, fruitless campaign from the Republican and Democratic candidates.

He'll get no argument there from me. Each side continues to define both itself and the other side by each other rather than by reality. And when the relative extremes of both parties continue to define their own candidate's campaign, whether directly or indirectly, that results in a skewed perception of the real stakes for Oregonians.

The fix?

End the party primary and let the people choose from among any and all who wish to run for the office in the general election.

Few know that Oregon pioneered the party primary back in 1904 in an attempt to break the power of the party "bosses." And for a while that seemed to work. But, the party primary has outlived it's usefulness as Sadler says because the very rank and file that the primary election was designed to empower have become turned off and have largely given up... thus allowing the ideological activists to assume the old role of "party boss" and dictate to the rank and file who they may choose from come general election time.

The 2003 California Recall Election offered a rare experiment in what happens when you sidestep the entire primary process.

By virtue of the 2003 California recall -- where all voters decide whether to recall an elected official and simultaneously choose a replacement -- Schwarzenegger is the only major public officeholder in the country who was not nominated in a partisan convention or primary. He was elected in a race where every registered voter had a chance to choose from a multiple list of candidates -- including partisans and independents.

While The Governator has clearly had his ups and downs since winning that election, he has surged ahead of his Democratic opponent. All this in one of the bluest of blue states. Schwarzenegger's lows can be traced to his failed attempts to play partisan hardball. Four abjectly failed initiatives later Schwarzenegger changed tacts and started working with Democrats and watched his popularity surge. All by a Republican in a thoroughly Dem-dominated state. And if the left end of the blogosphere is any indication, Schwarzenegger was never accepted by the party loyalists who had become used to controlling who got into the Governor's mansion.

In a national partisan environment where registered voters can be roughly divided into three more or less equal-sized camps of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, what sense does it make to continue to let our choices continue to polarize between ideological extremes via political primary elections? And why should Independents continue to be economically and politically raped by being forced to fund partisan primary elections in which we are typically forbidden from participating in?

Enough is enough. It's time to end our experiment with party primaries and truly let the voters decide who we want to represent us in government. It is our government after all... isn't it?