Bye-bye primaries.

Byline: The Register-Guard

First, the good news. Oregon will conduct its quadrennial presidential primary on May 18 next year, even though the nominees of the two major parties, certainly on the Republican side, will probably be settled by then.

But the presidential primary has always been mostly a sideshow to the state's regular primary - also scheduled for May 18 - that will decide party nominees for state and local offices and other issues.

Now, the bad news. Several states - Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Maine, New Mexico and Washington - have either decided to abandon their presidential primaries or are considering such a move.

The understandable - but unfortunate - motivation behind these cancellations is cost.

The state of Colorado, for instance, can save $2 million by not holding a statewide presidential primary. For Kansas, the cancellation of its April 6 presidential preference vote will save $1.75 million. Washington Gov. Gary Locke is considering a special session of the state Legislature to consider dumping his state's presidential primary and replacing it with precinct caucuses by political parties. Locke estimates such a move would save an estimated $7 million.

Some politicos like the caucus system because they say it emphasizes "person-to-person" politics, as opposed to the primarily advertisement-driven primaries. Others contend that primaries allow longshots and unknowns to at least make a stab at mobilizing winning efforts.

Both sides make good points, but our view has always been that a primary is a far more open process than a caucus system and is more likely to produce unexpected results.

Some of the push for the changes is coming from the Republican Party, which doesn't want President Bush to be blindsided or embarrassed by some challenger within his own party. But that's unlikely to happen.

The real purpose of a primary election is to give a party's voters a say in who will be its nominees in the general election. A caucus system diminishes that democratic decision and allows party insiders to choose the nominees. Yes, presidential primaries can be raucous and unpredictable. But they produce more democratic selections of nominees than caucus systems.