Uncle Sam (Reed) has elected to put Washington’s official primary right there on the verge of relevance. February 19th, 2008 will be Washington’s big day. Of course, the whole story’s a little more complicated…
The party caucuses will begin on the 8th of February, just after Super-Duper Tuesday, putting Washington in line to be about the 25th state to allocate its delegates to the nominating conventions.
But wait! There’s more! The parties have decided, finally, to have it their own ways in the nominating process. The Republicans will allocate their delegates based in part on their caucuses and in part on the results of the primary vote itself. It sounds like the two results will be weighted, 19 delegates from the primary, 22 from the caucuses, and 3 “automatic” delegates, members of the state and national committees.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are putting everything behind the caucuses: The primary vote will count for precisely nothing, with all delegates being selected by caucus, just like in the good old days.
Now, I’m going to take what I like to think of as the high ground on this issue. You might disagree with me. The editorial board of the Longview Daily News sure seems to. Their editorial (reprinted by the Spokesman-Review here) blasts the Washington State Democrats as, har, undemocratic for denying Washingtonians “this opportunity to voice their preference, even if most party leaders don’t want to hear it.”
That kind of Republican water-carrying is all well and good in Longview (although Cowlitz county went to Cantwell 56-40 in 2006), but it simply won’t do here. Their argument is that it’s better for the people to vote on things. I’m sympathetic to this position. In fact, I almost always agree with it.
In Washington we’ve had a lot of conversations over the years about how primaries work, and how they should work. Here’s the sticking point for me: the people should choose who wins the various offices of state, but who the parties nominate is exclusively the business of the party. If you don’t like the way your party’s working or who they’re nominating, then get in there and do something about it.
My ultimate preference would be a shift toward a single transferrable vote (STV) system. The mechanics of STV systems are tricky, but the gist is this: it totally eliminates spoiler candidates and ensures that whoever wins is actually the most-desired candidate. STV could be used in primary elections, general elections or both, any of which would be a big step forward for both third party candidates and democracy. If you’re curious, there’s a wonderful Wikipedia article that goes into depth on the topic. The next-best thing: long, drawn-out, exhausting, totally partisan caucuses.
I like caucuses because they are purely partisan events. People actually talk about the relative merits of the candidates and then vote on who the group supports. This is progressive politics, grassroots politics, at its very best. The argument that the Daily News editorial board floats seems to suggest that having more people making a decision is better, regardless of the mechanism of deciding. I’ve always thought that how we get to a decision is pretty important.
Agree or disagree in the comments.