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This is filing week for candidates for public office in preparation for the state’s first-ever top-two primary election. In some races, such as our own 40th Legislative District Senate contest, there is a very real prospect of the top-two primary finishers being in the same party.
Instead of a general election that offers the top candidates from all parties — whether Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens or other — voters will have only two candidates from which to choose in November. Understandably, party partisans are unhappy with the new system. But they have only themselves to blame. Washington state for nearly 70 years was well-served by the blanket primary in which voters could choose among candidates from all parties on the same ballot. Survey after survey over the years show that the public overwhelmingly supported that system.
The system by and large produced elected officials who were moderates of both the major parties. Republican Dan Evans, for example, was considered one of the nation’s best governors during his three terms in office. He was elected with the help of many Democratic and independent voters.
In fact, Washington primaries worked so well that California in 1996 adopted the same system through an initiative approved by a vote of the people, eliminating party-only balloting.
California’s party bosses didn’t like that. They saw it as weakening their control of the nominating process. They went to court and in June of 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the blanket primary unconstitutional, saying that it violates the parties’ “freedom of association.”
Inspired by the California decision, Washington’s political party leaders rushed off to court seeking to dump this state’s seven-decade blanket primary. In September of 2003, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave them what they wanted.
Everybody was happy — except for the voters, who punished the parties by enacting in November 2004 the top-two primary system. The parties again ran to court, but this time to no avail.
The U.S. Supreme Court last March upheld the top-two primary system in which candidates can label themselves on the ballot as they choose. The party organizations are left with their only option being the public declaration of preference for a particular candidate.
In the end, the parties got a system that erodes their influence far more than the blanket primary ever did. Sadly, it also narrows voters’ choices on the general election ballot as well.
However, in adopting the top-two primary, the voters were sending a message to the leaderships of all political parties that the vote belongs to the people, not party organizations.
• Editorials reflect the consensus opinion of the editorial board and are written by its members: Publisher L. Stedem Wood, Editor Don Nelson and City Editor Dick Clever.
Parties got just deserts with top-two primary
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