Thursday, December 26, 2013

Cascadian politics and how we vote in a primary around here

What I can point to is a point when political parties in Washington tried to force greater political allegiance and were bucked by the voters. About 15 years ago the Republican and Democratic parties sued and were able to get Washington's old open primary law tossed by the courts. In the old version, Washington voters did not register by party and were able to vote for any candidate in a primary. The top vote getter from each party would advance.

After the courts threw out that version (because the parties said that by not controlling who voted in their primaries violated their rights to association) the state instituted a more closed primary. Each voter would get a series ballots with only a certain party's candidates on each. You'd turn in one ballot, forcing you to participate in only one primary.

This was similar to Oregon's current primary law in which parties have the ability to open their primaries to non-registered voters.

The Washington voters quickly rejected the more closed primary system, opting instead for a Top Two primary, which actually just works as a qualifying election. Instead of the original primary system that sought to break down the walls that guarded parties by opening up their nomination processes to the general public, the Top Two makes that meaningless. The Top Two passes along the top vote getters, even if both say they're Democrats or Republicans.

A similar election system was rejected by more than a 10 percent margin in Oregon, giving argument to the point that maybe Oregon and Washington aren't that alike in political cultures. But, an analysis after Measure 65 went down in flames said the loss had more to do with the explanation of the measure than anything else.

That Oregon voters were used to their current system and Washington voters had a new system foisted on them by the courts and the parties was probably the best way to explain the difference in the two initiative results.

The most important thing to think about in terms of the possibility of a Top Two system in Oregon is that the idea itself in 2008 came from the political center of the state political culture. Rather than some quixotic political dreamer, Measure 65 was proposed by two former Oregon secretaries of state and supported by a popular former (and now again current) governor. And, now its coming back again.

So, the idea of voting systems that ignore the institutional power of parties likely have some home in the Cascadian political culture. Rather than a large group or band centered politics, like religion, politics are grown from much smaller groups and from the person themselves. It is important to participate, the civic good is worth promoting. But, no large organization or institution is going to tell the average Cascadian voter what to do.

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