Sherri votes...
and so should you!
November 2004:
This measure proposes a new system for conducting primaries for partisan offices. This proposal continues current practice of permitting voters to vote for any candidate for any office in primary and general elections, without limitation based on party. The two top candidates with the most votes in the primary advance to the general election. Candidates continue to designate their party. It becomes effective only if the court decision invalidating the traditional blanket primary becomes final.
I recommend a NO vote on I-872.
Since 1935, Washingtonians have voted in a "blanket" primary, in which voters could vote for any candidate they wanted, regardless of party. If you wanted to vote for a Democrat in the primary race for Senate, but really liked the Republican candidate for governor, you could vote for both. I know, it sounds improbable now, but once upon a time, there were actually moderate Republicans running for office, so it wasn’t inconceivable to want to vote for both a Democrat and a Republican.
Then California tried to crash the party. In 1996, Californians passed Proposition 198, which created a blanket primary for California. In a rare act of cooperation and accord, both the Democratic and Republican parties immediately filed suit to block implementation of the blanket primary in California. The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which agreed with the parties that the blanket primary infringed on their right to free association: the parties had the right to have their nominee selected only by members of the party.
With such a precedent, Washington’s blanket primary was doomed. So, how do you replace it? The legislature passed a hodge-podge if-then-else kind of bill. The legislature proposed a "top-two" primary, such as the one Louisiana uses, but in case that one didn’t hold up to court challenge, also proposed a Montana-style primary as a fallback. The governor then used a partial-veto to veto the top-two primary, leaving the Montana primary in place. This primary, which Washingtonians will be using Sept. 14, does not require that voters register with a party (as many states do), but does require that voters choose a party primary to vote in, and only vote for candidates in that party for the primary. The winners of the primary will then be the nominees for the various parties in the general election this November, where voters will no longer be constrained to vote for only one party.
The Washington State Grange has put forth Initiative I-872, which would institute the Louisiana style top-two primary. As in the blanket primary, voters would be free to vote for whichever candidate they choose, regardless of party. The constitutional difficulties are skirted by not having the primary select the nominees from the parties for the general election. Instead, the top two vote-getters in each race move on to the general election, regardless of party. It’s really more like having a general election followed by a run-off election, than a traditional primary.
So, how does this limit choice? And why shouldn’t I be able to vote for anybody I want in the primary? Isn’t that more democratic?
It’s entirely conceivable, and probably even likely in some US House races, that the top two vote-getters from the primary will be from the same party. If both candidates in the general election are from the same party, then the political discussion in the election is going to have a fairly narrow focus; they’re the members of the same party, they’re going to agree on many big issues. So the differences will be out at the margins; if you’re not a member of that party, and disagree with the party on major issues, not only do you not have a candidate to choose who matches you at all, your issues aren’t even on the table for discussion.
Another way in which the political discussion is limited by the top two system is that such a system effectively prevents any third party candidate from ever making a general election ballot. This November, there will be Libertarian candidates on the general election ballot; with a top-two system, it’s very unlikely that that will happen again. Sure, those candidates are not going to win anything, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have an impact on the race and on the issues addressed in the campaign.
It is frustrating to vote when you don’t feel like your views are represented by the candidates presented to you. On the surface, being able to vote for anybody in the primary seems like a solution to this frustration. I once thought it was the solution to getting more moderate candidates, which I liked, on the general election ballot. I remember being frustrated back in 1992 in California when the moderate Republican I liked, Tom Campbell, lost the primary race to Bruce Herschensohn, a very right wing candidate I didn’t like. This left me to choose between two candidates who were both more extreme than I was. I wished that I had been able to vote for Tom Campbell in the primary, but not badly enough to vote only for Republicans in the primary.
Which is the point the parties are making: I wasn’t a Republican, so why should I choose who the Republican nominee is? There were obviously more Republicans who wanted Herschensohn. I was frustrated because I didn’t like the way other voters were voting.
Which is really more democratic: allowing me to cross over and dilute their votes, or for me to get involved and do the work of persuading other voters of the rightness of my position?
Democracy is not neat and clean; it’s messy and hard work. I believe we reach better decisions as a group when we allow many voices to be heard, when we have disagreements, even when we think those other voters are nuts.
I-872 may increase voter choices in the primary, but at the cost of decreasing choice in the general election. Remember that this style of primary comes to us courtesy of Louisiana, home to the infamous Edwin Edwards-David Duke gubernatorial race. Some choice, huh? That race prompted "Vote for the Crook" bumper stickers. I don’t think anybody’s frustrations with the voting system were resolved, there.
Websites of interest:
http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/blanket_primary.aspx - lots of information about the blanket primary, including links to the Supreme Court decision in the California case.
http://www.wa-grange.org - the Washington State Grange, primary supporter of I-872.