Washington Senate Bill 6236 passed the legislature on March 1. It moves the major party primary from September to August. It also moves the presidential deadline for minor parties and independent candidates from September to July, and their deadline for other office from July to June. It takes effect in 2007.
What is going on? Despite the fact that the major parties seem to be trying to nominate their candidates later and later (take for example that the GOP formally renominated George W Bush in September 2004, just before the Labor Day weekend), some states want to force minor parties to choose their candidates sooner and sooner.
It doesn’t make sense to me. With the technological advances, I think early to mid-September should be a reasonable date for all parties, major and minor, to inform their final lists of candidates, so the ballots can be printed and sample ballots can be distributed among voters during October. In some extreme circumstances, the authorities could amend the ballot as late as the end of October.