The Independent Party of Oregon is ballot-qualified, but it doesn’t have registration equal to 5% of the state total. Therefore, it doesn’t qualify for a government primary. But because it is a very large party (with approximately 75,000 registered members) it desires to use a primary instead of a convention to nominate its candidates.

On April 30, the Oregon Secretary of State approved the party’s plan to charge candidates filing fees to run in the party’s privately-administered primary. The Secretary of State says this is permitted as long as the party’s bylaws include the details of the fee, and as long as the fee is applied uniformly to all candidates for the same office.

Candidates that run in government-administered primaries in Oregon pay filing fees to the government, in order to appear on primary ballots.