Recently, I had a conversation with some other better donkeys about the state of primary elections in Washington State. Rumor had it, one of them said, that the Republican party in Washington State is trying to change the rules of the new primary system to require that Republican party officials have the authority to decide which candidates have the right to run under the Republican party – because they want to choose only one candidate per race to run in the primary. Wow, I thought. That’s scary. The whole point of the primary is for voters to be able to pick which candidates should run in the general election. Those damn Republicans…

Well, I read an article in the Seattle Times on Friday that stated that both parties – Democrats and Republicans – should be able to choose their candidates for the primary. Apparently my previous thought was a little premature – both parties are arguing for this change.

So, why is this all happening? Well, you all may be aware that last year, former Governor Locke signed into law a bill that gave us a new primary system, where every voter had to choose a party and only vote for candidates of that party. You could change which party you voted under from one election to the next, but on any given ballot, you could only vote for candidates from one party.

The reasoning behind this change was that each party wanted to prevent voters from the OTHER party from voting for a less-electable candidate, therefore increasing the chance that the other party would do well in the general election. I believe that there were elections in the past in Washington State where this very thing happened – usually with democratic voters helping a more extreme Republican to win the primary, so that in the general election, voters had to choose between a more reasonable Democratic candidate and an extreme Republican candidate. From the party’s perspective, this makes sense because it means that voters with an affiliation to a party are the ones choosing its representative, and it gives the minority party a fairer shake. A lot of voters, however, were outraged that it prevented them from voting for whoever they wanted, understandably.

So, a citizen initiative popped up and we voted in a different primary system, before anyone had had a chance to get used to the one I just described. The new primary is referred to as the “top two” system – it allows voters to vote for whoever they want in the primary, and then the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, proceed to the general election. This presents the same sort of problem as the original primary – the problem that caused the parties to lobby for the first new primary system, that we used last fall.

So, while I think that the parties concerns are justified, I don’t like the idea that the parties should be able to choose one candidate to run in the primary election. I always thought that the whole point of the primary election was to choose which candidate best represented each party – if only one candidate is allowed to run for each party in the primary, what’s the point?

Upon reflection, the only advantage I can see under the system that the parties are proposing is that in the primary, people could vote for third party candidates in the primary, thereby expressing their preference for that candidate, without worrying that their vote is taking away a vote from their second-choice candidate, and then they could vote for their second-choice democrat or republican in the general election. But I don’t know if this benefit outweighs the loss of the ability of the voters to determine which candidates should be nominated by each party. Given a choice, I would prefer the current (straight party ballot) system to the top-two, if the parties succeed in winning the right to limit who runs in the primary.

What do you think?