Good riddanceto city primary

This year's Baker City Council election might be the antithesis of the presidential race.

This is a good thing.

No seemingly interminable primary season.

No paring of the candidates.

Just one ballot, with a slate of names for voters to choose from in November (or late October, considering Oregon's vote-by-mail system).

Baker City never really needed a primary for City Council elections. But it wasn't until May 2006 that city voters decided to change the city's charter, which dates to 1952, to eliminate primaries.

The ballot measure voters approved in May 2006, by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, excised from the charter two sections pertaining to elections. Instead,the city follows state elections laws, which do not require a primary for non-partisan races such as for city councils.

Voters altered the charter in another wise way: They deleted the charter provision that required the November ballot contain at least twice as many candidates as there are openings on the council.

That requirement forced city officials, in several elections when candidates were scarce, to ask people who had not campaigned, but who received write-in votes, if they were willing to have their names added to the ballot.

In 2004 a candidate who received just two write-in votes in the May primary was elected that November.

Considering that the city has not been exactly overwhelmed with candidates, it made no sense to schedule a primary at which, at least conceivably, some prospective councilors would have their campaigns end half a year before the election.

The current system that will debut this year is much simpler, and for that reason alone superior.

Under the city's previous schedule, candidates interested in filling one of four openings on the seven-member council would have had to file their petitions by March 11. (The terms of councilors Sam Bass, Gail Duman, Terry Schumacher and Jeff Petry expire Dec. 31. Bass, Duman and Schumacher are eligible to run for re-election; Petry, due to the city's term limits law, is not eligible.)

But now, thanks to the elimination of the primary election, prospective councilors have until Sept. 4 to decide whether they want to run. That affords people plenty of time to collect, as election law requires, the signatures from 41 registered voters who live inside the city limits.

We hope those extra months, and the absence of a primary, will encourage residents who want to help govern their city to add their names to the November election ballot.