Over the weekend, the Oregon Republican Party decided to let independent voters vote in its 2012 primary, but only for the three statewide state offices. Oregon has no U.S. Senate race up in 2012, but it has these statewide offices: Attorney General, Treasurer, and Secretary of State. See this story. The party says it is an experiment and it will see how it works before possibly opening up its primary later for district and county partisan offices.

The party says the presidential primary will not be open to independent voters in 2012. Although the story seems to say that the Republican National Committee won’t allow the state party to do that, it seems more likely that the Republican National Committee only has a rule that says it is too late to change the rules for presidential primaries in 2012, not that the national Republican Party has a rule in general against open presidential primaries. There are many Republican presidential primaries open to independent voters, all across the nation.