Fed up with hyper-partisan politics? Dislike not getting to vote for whomever you want in a primary election? Vote for Ballot Measure 90 in November.

Switching Oregon to a top-two open primary system doesn’t guarantee Oregon politicians will be transmuted into a new breed of centrists. But it could encourage less partisanship and more competition in a host of races. And the 500,000 Oregonians who chose not to be affiliated with any party finally would get to have a voice in primary elections.

The top-two system works like this: There would be a single primary election open to all voters. It doesn’t matter if a voter is a Democrat, Republican, or a member of any other party or a member of no party. They all get to vote.

All registered voters would get to vote on all the candidates listed for an office on a single ballot. Every voter would vote for one candidate. The top two vote-getters would go on to the general election.

It would apply essentially to every partisan local and state race and races for the U.S. House and Senate. Nonpartisan local elections could be decided in the primary if a candidate got 50 percent of the vote plus one. The change in Oregon’s primary system would not apply to the presidential primary, because of federal law.

You can tell a lot about a ballot measure by looking at who is against it. The loudest opponents are unions and the Democratic and Republican parties. They like the current system. They don’t want a shake-up. They don’t want to lose influence. If they were doing such a great job of putting candidates forward and running the state, there would be a lot less reason to support Measure 90.

Opponents made a variety of arguments to us, including that voters will find the new primary confusing. Voters are too stupid to get it? Really?

Opponents argue it could increase the cost of campaigns. There are places in Eastern Oregon where winning the Republican primary now essentially means winning the election. And there are places in the Willamette Valley where the same can be said of winning the Democratic primary. Is it really such a bad thing that such candidates will now have to face competition in November, even if it’s with two candidates from the same party? We don’t think so.

Some also worry about how this system might hurt minor parties. Minor parties always struggle to get their message out and to get any sort of mass appeal. Switching to the top-two primary gives minor party candidates the same opportunity as any other candidate to get on the November ballot. They need to convince voters to vote for them just like anybody else. And under Measure 90, minor parties can cross endorse in the primaries, which they can’t do now.

There is nothing magical about Measure 90. Similar primary systems adopted recently in California and Washington have not put an end to political polarization, shattered gridlock or made so many challenging political issues simple. Nobody expected that there or that Measure 90 would do that here.

But what Measure 90 does do is give partisanship more than just a nudge. It enfranchises hundreds of thousands of Oregonians in the primary system. Vote for Measure 90.