On January 26, the Washington State House Committee on Government Operations passed HB 1860 by a vote of 10-1. It amends the law on how voters choose major party political committee members. The existing law was declared unconstitutional last year because it allows the entire electorate to help choose party officers.
The bill provides that the primary ballot used for choosing party officers must include a check-box, asking the voter to check his or her party. If the voter chooses the Democratic box, for example, then the voter may proceed to vote for members of the Democratic Party’s precinct committee. The voter’s choice of a party via this checkbox is secret.
It is hard to see how the voter’s choice is a secret. I just read 2nd Substitute HB 1860 and there’s a clause that says the county auditor must compile a list of names of voters who returned a partisan ballot separated by precinct. The auditor will make sure it corresponds with the partisan candidacy. Who thinks the State and/or county Dems and Reps arn’t going to get this list. Everything to date is done for them. This is a back-door registration for those really want to be involved in such a thing. But it won’t have a lot of integrity having only the official consequence of having one’s vote for a Precint Committee Officer count, not for other offices, public offices. But gosh, what else could the major parties do with information about an individual voter who chose to affiliate that particular primary election day with a particular major party? It wouldn’t be good.
We need to get rid of these types of laws and use the caucus system for electing these people.That way members would have to show up and vote. Many of these positions still go unfilled, even with tax supported primaries.
On February 3, they replaced the 2nd substitute. If you look at the committee materials for the 1:30 committee meeting, it is amendments REIL 024 and REIL 025. This will be rolled into a 3rd substitute, which hasn’t been published yet, but was approved on 13-0.
024 replaced the checkbox, with a statement after each candidate indicating affiliation – so that a vote for a candidate and affiliation are combined. All the list production is removed, and there is no link to a voter, so it is like the pick-a-party primary but limited to one office.
It also eliminates write-in votes for PCO.
025 eliminated ballots for uncontested races. So basically eliminates PCO elections, since most are uncontested, and if no one files, the parties can just appoint someone. I suspect in many cases, the county parties have to recruit a candidate.
024 also includes a preamble that explains they are complying with the court ruling, and explains that they might severely constrain political association, so long as there are compelling state interests – which would be voter privacy, and getting by on the cheap.
They would probably welcome a legal challenge that said “you can’t make us use your system”.
The original plan had been to use the presidential primary. The Democratic National Committee requires public affiliation of voters, which causes problems for states where party choice is secret. Washington had come up with a system where the voter would return the ballot in an envelope with their name and address, and lists of these would be given to the parties. For some reason, the Democratic party in Washington didn’t like this system, and would ignore the presidential primary and use caucuses, and then complain about the cost (but they would take the lists of voters). So if there was still a presidential primary, the PCO elections could have been added. But then they eliminated the presidential primary completely for 2012 – the Democrats control the legislature and would just as soon leave the Republicans out of the process.
#3 Thank you sir.