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The Petri Dish
April 23, 2008

 
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ADDITIONAL ITEMS
• Democratic Party response ( PDF)
• Republican Party response ( PDF)
 

Update: Lawyers for GOP, Dems blast rules for primary


Posted at 12:01 am by Jerry Cornfield

If you want to read exactly what the state Democratic and Republican parties don't like about the proposed rules for the "top two" primary, I've attached the letters sent by party attorneys to the Office of the Secretary of State.

Katie Blinn, the state's assistant director of elections, says the goal is to put out the final rules by the end of the week.

Then everyone waits to see if the state and the two political parties will meet in court to hash out differences on how the election will be run.

Here again is a link to the proposed rules for the Aug. 19 primary.

It should come as no surprise that the Democratic and Republican parties don't embrace the regulations and want the state to hold off from trying out the new system this year.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction of each letter

Republican Party attorney John White writes:

“The draft regulations have been prepared in haste, and it shows, both in substance and in technical drafting. The state has available an alternative approach that has worked before, In 2000, the state was also presented with a Supreme Court decision affecting an election schedule to occur within months of the decision. At that time, rather than create a substantial risk of disruption by rushing to implement a new system, the state and political parties agreed to an orderly schedule for resolving the legal issues presented – while following an established and tested set of election rules. We are again faced with such a situation and the better course of action for the people of the state is to continue the system in place, and for which your office already adopted emergency regulations last month, rather than attempting to craft a new system on the fly.”

Democratic Party attorney David McDonald writes:

“My principal comment with regard to these draft regulations is that the proposed implementation of I-872 does not solve - and in some cases does not even address - serious problems. Indeed, the apparent decision that your office will attempt to unilaterally replace a well-thought out, tested and familiar primary system with a patchwork, hastily pulled together proposal to partially implement I-872 may create even more problems.”
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