July 3 is the deadline for statewide initiatives to submit petitions in Oregon this year. Although two different initiatives had been circulating for a top-two election system, only one of them appears to have qualified. The one that almost certainly qualified submitted over 140,000 signatures last week, and provides for a standard top-two system, similar to the ones used in California and Washington.

The one that failed to obtain enough signatures would have used approval voting in the May primary.

The measure that qualified had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from a handful of wealthy contributors, and used paid circulators. The version that failed was mostly dependent on volunteers.