Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed wants the legislature to move the primary from late August to early August. A few years ago, the legislature had moved the primary from mid-September to late August. See this story. Reed also supports abolishing the state’s presidential primary.
I wonder whether it is an either/or package. Washington currently counts late arriving ballots as long as they are postmarked by election day night. But that means that counting drags on after the election, which delays sending out general election ballots for military voters. But he is also proposing receipt of ballots by election night, which might let the election continue in late August.
Washington ought to follow the example of Louisiana and let military voters vote a contingent general election ballot.
Reed is proposing cancelling the presidential primary for 2012. But I thought if the legislature does nothing that there are no primary-qualified parties.
The Secretary of State’s proposed bill will also probably also address the definition of “political party”, although the Secretary of State contends that the Democratic and Republican Parties are still ballot-qualified.
The Secretary of State still hasn’t put his election law proposals on his web page.
The legislation gets too complicated if you include too much in it. The all-mail legislation repeals tons of statute that handle conduct of election that is rarely used. Presumably, the SOS office wrote that bill.
I don’t think the SOS can actually legislate, and so has to find some legislators to actually propose the legislation. And legislators are going to want to have a hand in shaping the party regulations.
And the trial is coming up on the party issues. Judge Coughenour will rule against Washington on the election of party officials. So Reed can then go to the legislature and let them pass the bill that fixes the problems, while all the other issues get appealed to the 9th Circuit and the Supreme Court.
In the previous legislation, Reed had proposed moving the party officer elections back to the general election, where they had been before the Pick-A-Party primary was imposed. The party elections require public disclosure of participation, so voters could receive two ballots the regular ballot which they put in a secrecy sleeve, and a party ballot which they put in a sleeve that they sign. This latter could also be used to maintain qualification of minor parties. The previous legislation would make the parties re-qualify every election. But if you simply included the ability of voters to publicly affirm their allegiance to the SalmonYoga or Grange parties or whatever, and there were 100 or 150, then the party would remain qualified. And that is easier to check than checking petitions. Hand the affiliation lists over to each party, and they can engage in whatever political association that they wanted to.
What I was attempting to note was that he proposed canceling the presidential primary for 2012, but not abolishing it for 2016 and the future. Washington Democrats have not used the primary results in the past, and have complained about the Republicans wasting money.
P.R. and App.V. = NO primaries are needed