Don’t give up on primary alternatives

Published 12:00 pm Saturday, September 23, 2006

A popular musical gave us the phrase “Iowa stubborn,” about a community so intransigent that its denizens “could stand touching noses for a week at a time and never see eye to eye.”

Change the setting to Washington, and you have Tuesday’s primary election – with the collective contrariness not between citizens themselves, but rather ’twixt voters and elections officials. Dissatisfaction with the court-imposed “closed primary” – in which voters were required to declare a party affiliation to vote in partisan races – led to a surprising level of self-disenfranchisement. In King County, an estimated 11 percent of ballots were invalidated because voters failed to mark “D” or “R” at the top; in Snohomish, invalidation was a staggering 15 percent; in Kitsap it was 10 percent; and statewide, 8 percent. Cynics may ascribe that failure rate to mass ineptitude – the inability of others to follow the simplest instructions, which the Kitsap ballot even highlighted in bright yellow – but elections officials have heard enough grousing to know that many folks are flouting the rules as a means of protest, even if it means their vote won’t be counted.

“A great number of voters have telephoned us or put nasty messages on their ballots, telling us what they think of this type of election,” Kitsap auditor Karen Flynn says.

’Twasn’t always thus. Washington voters for decades enjoyed a “blanket primary” under which independents and freethinkers could cross party lines to help decide all races of interest to them. That worked fine until, goaded by the major political parties, the courts struck down the arrangement and narrowed participation. Which led to (among other lunacies) Tuesday’s scenario, in which Kitsap’s next sheriff was picked exclusively by Democrats, and the assessor only by Republicans.

Some have suggested that if, as the court reasons, the

primaries are held for the benefit of the parties, then the parties ought to be paying for them. Tuesday’s Kitsap primary election cost county taxpayers $350,000; split that tab down the middle and send bills to Democratic and Republican party headquarters, and one suspects their enthusiasm for the “closed primary” might wane a bit. No doubt the parties can think of other things to spend their money on, like roadside signs, junk mail and negative advertising.

But Flynn tends to think that if the parties were forced to pony up, they would take even more direct ownership of the primaries than the court has already handed them. Party apparati would write the rules and narrow the candidate choices still further; shorn of county oversight, the primary election would have even less credibility than it does today.

Interestingly, an initiative being considered by the state Grange organization would strip party affiliation from primary ballots altogether – a not unappealing notion first glance, and we expect to hear more. Surely there must be some constructive way to restore confidence in the primary and bend them back to the electorate’s preference.

Yes, next primary season you can again refuse to mark “D” or “R” in protest. But when it means your vote won’t count, “Washington stubborn” is more “Washington stupid” – and we should be smarter than that.