Posted on 03/29/2002 2:25:06 PM PST by ThreeYearLurker
Bucking the trend to mail-in ballots, some among us still feel a sense of community that comes with traveling to a flag-draped voting place, trading pleasantries with poll watchers and emerging with a stars-and-stripes sticker saying "I Voted."
But the desire to be friendly with people ends in the privacy of the voting booth.
Until recently, I was fearful that Democratic state Chairman Paul Berendt, GOP Chairman Chris Vance and term-limits crusader Sherry Bockwinkel would crowd into my voting cubicle and dictate what names could appear on my ballot.
What a relief on Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Franklin Burgess emphatically upheld Washington's "blanket" primary, against efforts by the two parties to force voters to register or declare a party preference, limiting ballot choices.
Burgess preserved my range of choices, and spared me the avalanche of junk mail that flows when one's name gets on political mailing lists.
The case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has lately been sympathetic to what the GOP's Vance calls "the rights of private associations." It contains three rightist, results-driven justices -- William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- who are spiritual heroes to the Taliban wing of the Republican Party.
Burgess hit at the heart of the matter, ruling that parties -- who've fought the blanket primary -- provided no real evidence that the popular 67-year-old law harmed them.
In fact, having a wide-open primary does exactly the opposite. It can save Democrats and Republicans from narrow, sectarian behavior that often infects "private associations."
As political activism in America has waned, party organizations have tended to become bookends of the political spectrum.
The Democrats are loaded up with litmus-test urban liberals, and interest group specimens deep into political correctness.
As to the Republicans, the Christian right and conservative talk radio have spawned a legion of what Rush Limbaugh calls "ditto heads," insulated in their thinking and virulently intolerant of anybody who disagrees with them.
Polls show the majority of voters reside someplace else: Independents are now this state's largest voting bloc.
We've also developed a hybrid middle-class voter, progressive on some issues -- public education, the environment and privacy -- while conservative on taxation and safeguarding the public purse. They hold the key to parties' electoral fortunes.
Recent primaries provide evidence that the blanket primary, with all candidates appearing on all ballots, can work to help -- not harm -- the parties.
State Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn was the darling of district Democratic organizations in the 2000 U.S. Senate primary. She wowed conventions with populist bromides, broadsides at health insurers and patients who were healed after she fought their HMOs.
Senn would almost surely have lost to GOP Sen. Slade Gorton. A more moderate technology-tuned Democrat, Maria Cantwell, went over the liberals' heads and appealed to a broader stream of primary voters. She won, barely upsetting Gorton, and gave the Democrats a coveted 50th vote in the Senate.
In 1996, a low-turnout Republican primary picked ex-state Sen. Ellen Craswell for governor. Nomination of a religious rightist ended any chance the GOP could halt 12 years of Democratic statehouse dominance. She lost badly to Gary Locke.
Or look at the Legislature.
Due to resignations, district party organizations often make interim appointments, in GOP East Side bastions as well as solidly Democratic Seattle.
The result is often party hacks or, to put it more gently, lawmakers of little influence. They get picked by litmus test for posts where the needed job requirement is an ability to craft society's compromises.
Voters do a much better job, and they deserve the job. As Judge Burgess wrote, a candidate for partisan office "need not first pass muster with a political party to which he chooses to align."
Were there not ethical strictures involved, I'd buy the judge a pint.
And another for former state Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge, architect of the 7-2 majority that overturned Washington's emotion-of-the-moment term-limits law.
That ruling allowed me to vote to re-elect state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano, the Senate transportation chairwoman who crafted a bipartisan transportation funding package -- and mustered a 34-15 margin for enacting it into law without delay. Would that the House, full of rookies, had similar cojones.
One more pint in memory of U.S. District Judge Bill Dwyer, whose beautifully crafted ruling threw out term limits for members of Congress. The Supreme Court sustained Dwyer by a surprisingly narrow 5-4 margin.
Clarence Thomas dissented, saying states should have the right to whatever ballot restrictions they want. We'll soon see if he feels this state has a right to conduct primary elections as it sees fit. Consistency is not the forte of conservative judges.
The Libertarians were also party to this lawsuit. They, as well as the Republicans and Democrats, sought to change the primary. In Washington's primary, in a district where only three Republicans are running, the Democrats will turn out to elect the most liberal one. Thus, districts that favor conservative Republicans get saddled with a Rhino. In the case of Ellen Crasswell, Dale Foreman, a Republican who could have beaten the Democrats, was beaten out by Democrats voting for Crasswell.
Washington state needs to change something, since out of seven representatives and two U. S. senators we have only three Republicans, and we have a liberal governor who is wrecking the state. Our U.S. senators are probably the dumbest in the Senate. They cry about the state's unemployment problems and budget problems, but in reality THEY are the problem.
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