Returning a ballot in the 2018 midterm election
Returning a ballot in the 2018 midterm election

May 17th is the sec­ond day of Fil­ing Week in Wash­ing­ton State, but in Ore­gon and Ida­ho, today is Pri­ma­ry Elec­tion Day, with much at stake.

Read­ers, if you live in the Beaver State or the Gem State, it’s very, very impor­tant you exer­cise your civic duty today and vote.

Midterm cycles are when both Ore­gon and Ida­ho hold their guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions in addi­tion to elec­tions for oth­er statewide posi­tions like Labor Com­mis­sion­er (in Ore­gon) and Attor­ney Gen­er­al (in Idaho).

Ore­gon and Ida­ho use pri­maries to allow vot­ers who wish to par­tic­i­pate in par­ty pol­i­tics to decide who should rep­re­sent the par­ty they’re aligned with on the state’s gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot for fed­er­al, state, and local positions.

Need to find a drop box to return your bal­lot? Here’s where to go if you live in Ore­gon. If you live in Ida­ho, use this link to look up your polling place.

Here’s some back­ground infor­ma­tion on each state’s nom­i­nat­ing event:

Oregon

Idaho

(Note that Ida­ho is not a uni­ver­sal vote-at-home state.)

Each state has sev­er­al note­wor­thy intra­party con­tests on the bal­lot that vot­ers will need to resolve. Here’s an overview of the Beaver State ones:

Among the hot races on Tuesday’s bal­lots: two open seats in Con­gress, cre­at­ed by the retire­ment of long­time Con­gress­man Peter DeFazio in the 4th Dis­trict and cre­ation of a new 6th Dis­trict due to pop­u­la­tion growth; a com­pet­i­tive race in the reshaped 5th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict; an open race for the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tions for gov­er­nor; a super-heat­ed race between three can­di­dates for a seat on the Port­land City Coun­cil; races to decide the polit­i­cal bal­ance of the Clacka­mas Coun­ty Com­mis­sion; con­test­ed races for dis­trict attor­ney in both Wash­ing­ton and Mar­i­on coun­ties; unprece­dent­ed chal­lenges to the chair of the Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty Com­mis­sion and the pres­i­dent of region­al gov­ern­ment Metro; the race to become Mult­nom­ah County’s first new coun­ty com­mis­sion chair in eight years; and a big-mon­ey race for the open posi­tion of state labor com­mis­sion­er.

And the Gem State ones, where the action is exclu­sive­ly on the Repub­li­can side:

This year’s elec­tions in Ida­ho are among the most con­se­quen­tial in years. All statewide offices are up for elec­tion, includ­ing gov­er­nor, lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, sec­re­tary of state, attor­ney gen­er­al and super­in­ten­dent of pub­lic instruc­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, all 105 seats in the Ida­ho Leg­is­la­ture are up for elec­tion this year.

[…]

Even though so many seats are up for elec­tion this year, that doesn’t mean every race on every pri­ma­ry elec­tion bal­lot is con­test­ed. Repub­li­cans have numer­ous con­test­ed statewide, con­gres­sion­al and leg­isla­tive races to decide today.

On the oth­er hand, Democ­rats aren’t run­ning can­di­dates in most leg­isla­tive races this year, and there are no con­test­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­isla­tive pri­ma­ry races.

Once the ini­tial results become avail­able tonight, we’ll share some com­men­tary and analy­sis here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Hap­py voting!

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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