On March 5, the Washington House passed HB 1860, which moves elections for Precinct Committee Officers from the general election to the presidential primary. Precinct Committee Officers are officers of the political parties.
The bill makes it likely, but not certain, that Washington state will continue to hold presidential primaries. The bill says a presidential primary will be held if “both” major parties tell the state no later than September 1 that they will choose all their delegates to national conventions via the presidential primary. If either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party insists on choosing some delegates by caucus, then the presidential primary is canceled for all parties.
It is interesting that the bill assumes that there will only be two qualified political parties into the indefinite future in Washington state. This assumption is because the bill refers to “both” the qualified parties. A qualified party in Washington state currently is one that polled at least 5% of the vote for President at the last presidential election.
Washington’s Secretary of State Sam Reed had proposed that the presidential primaries be eliminated, but the bills to do that did not advance.
Again — since when can a PRIVATE bunch of folks dictate ANY public policy ???
Just more of the political/actual insanity in the U.S.A. since 4 July 1776.
Our caucus-primary system has always been about the two parties. There is an alternative, and easy, way for other tickets to get on the ballot here. And we always have a bunch, like 10 or 12.
The legislation to suspend the 2012 prez primary, BTW, did not face the usual house-of-origin cutoff because it is a “necessary to implement the budget” bill, since it would save $10 million. But as you say, the PCO bill could supersede.
Dear Mr. Ammons, thanks for commenting. The Reform Party was a fully-qualified party in Washington state from November 1996 to November 1998. And the Libertarian Party was as well from November 2000 to November 2004.
There were only eight presidential candidates on the November 2008 Washington state ballot.
Unless memory fails me, always a possibility, I recollect that those parties were major parties for purposes of the regular state primary and general, not for the prez primary. State law then says that the GOP and Democratic nominees will automatically be on the November ballot and other presidential tickets can qualify by signatures from a nominating “convention” in one or more Washington cities.
What is ANY State doing in having public funds being used to choose the officers of a PRIVATE bunch of folks ???
See the 1989 Eu case.
i.e. How about the private party hack gangs have mail ballot elections for their own party hack officers ???
They could reword the bill to require a majority of major parties to agree to use the presidential primary results, and it would have much the same effect.
Even better would be to move the presidential race to the Open Primary.
And Washington should change the constitutional provisions for filling vacancies. It does not make sense to have the constitution to basically say: “legislators will be elected from districts” and then have a quite specific procedure for filling vacancies.
It would be better if the constitution said that the legislature shall provide for the filling of vacancies, and let them decide on the best way.